The most important holiday film is (obviously) Die Hard, where Bruce Willis plays an estranged husband who is not ready to let his marriage reconciliation plans be thwarted when weirdly well-armed and witty terrorists (nod to the late and great Alan Rickman) attack his wife’s employer during the company holiday party. The health care industry is similarly not ready to execute the myriad of interoperability and price transparency mandates for hospitals and payers (see more here) that are rolling out in quick succession. In a formal notice published today, CMS acknowledged the challenges associated with at least one of the mandates and declared that no well-armed terrorists (we are paraphrasing) will come after payers who are unable to implement the payer-to-payer data exchange rules (see different paraphrasing here, here). CMS also said it wasn’t ready to act on several other items, but it was “exploring” how to handle all of the other not-yet-released rules about streamlining the prior authorization process, USCDI updates, implementing TEFCA, and how to use FHIR standards to make future requirements possible (like an Advanced Explanation of Benefits). Just like Bruce Willis, who could have used more help from the federal agents that showed up at the terrorist scene, the industry could use additional help and guidance from its federal agency on all of this. We try to keep these blog posts clean, but — when you’re ready — see inappropriate and hilarious one-liners from the movie here.
