Legislators: Expand EHR Anti-Kickback Safe Harbors

In a recent letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, House legislators call for the expansion of the physician self-referral law exception and anti-kickback statute safe harbor for electronic health records.

Reps. Diane Black (R-Tenn, right) and Mike Honda (D-Calif.) say that expanding the current legislation exception to "prohibit actions that limit or restrict" use of donated technology in conjunction with other health IT tools would give a boost to interoperability efforts.

"One of the artificial obstacles to achieving interoperability is a practice known as 'information blocking,' where healthcare providers or electronic health record vendors have contracts that block information exchange between electronic health record systems," they say.