The Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) joined over 40 patient advocacy groups in signing onto the Alliance for Aging Research's comment letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the agency's proposed interoperability and patient access rule. While the letter commends CMS for acknowledging the importance of providers and patients being engaged in shared decision-making, advocates remain concerned that shared decision-making remains an unsupported and undefined concept within the agency. "To truly empower patients to 'effectively manage their own health, care, and costs' will require the agency to prioritize implementation of the National Quality Partners Playbook: Shared Decision-Making in Healthcare (Playbook)," the letter states. "Moving forward, we hope that CMS will work with our organizations to advance shared decision-making fundamentals for healthcare organizations, establish a measurement framework for shared decision-making, and then implement the ‘Drivers of Change’ outlined by the Playbook."
The letter in its entirety can be read here.
| sdm_comment_on_interoperabiity_final.pdf |