The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is extending compliance dates for a complex federal regulation aimed at ending information-blocking practices that impede the secure exchange and use of electronic health information by patients, doctors and health care organizations.

The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) says the final rule, implemented under the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), now has an “applicability date” of April 5, 2021. On and after that date, all “actors”—which includes health information networks and exchanges, EHR vendors and health care providers—“will be subject to information blocking.”

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.