As the industry leader in compliant exchange of medical data, Ciox, a Datavant company, partners with health systems to efficiently deliver patient-requested electronic health information (EHI) – a core requirement of the 21st Century Cures Act. On October 6, 2022, the definition of EHI under the Cures Act expanded to include all EHI that is, or would be, in a designated record set (DRS). This broader definition increases the complexity of fulfilling requests for patient records.
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To help healthcare providers comply with the 21st Century Cures Act by providing patients with easier, faster access to their medical records, Ciox has expanded Patient Request, an application that enables patients to request their records from anywhere, anytime. Patient Request now includes digital retrieval of patient medical records via application programming interfaces (API) to EMR systems. APIs enable a fully digital experience for patients – request intake, record retrieval, and record delivery are all digitized – dramatically reducing turnaround times and offering patients an improved and fully remote experience.
To date, nearly 600,000 patients have used the application to request their medical records in minutes. With the addition of APIs for record retrieval, turnaround times will be significantly reduced.
“Ciox is committed to partnering with healthcare providers to improve the patient experience. Offering digital release of information to provide easy access to medical records is a large part of that commitment,” said Pete McCabe, CEO of Datavant. “Due to data fragmentation, no single EMR or digital-only connection can access all of a patient’s data. Ciox pairs our technology with a world-class services division, giving us the ability to fulfill patient requests that can’t be completed through digital connections alone and helping providers ensure compliance with the Cures Act.”
Ciox Patient Request was introduced in 2020 to provide patients with a contactless records request process in response to the closure of medical records offices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, patients from 1,000+ healthcare provider sites have used the application to request their medical records – with positive feedback from 95% of patient users.