The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule (CMS-0057-F) on January 17, 2024. This final rule emphasizes the need to improve health information exchange to achieve appropriate and necessary access to health records for patients, healthcare providers, and payers. This final rule also focuses on efforts to improve prior authorization processes through policies and technology, to help ensure that patients remain at the center of their own care.

The rule enhances certain policies from the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule (CMS-9115-F) and adds several new provisions to increase data sharing and reduce overall payer, healthcare provider, and patient burden through improvements to prior authorization practices and data exchange practices.

Impacted payers are required to implement certain provisions by January 1, 2026. However, in response to stakeholder comments on the proposed rule, impacted payers have until primarily January 1, 2027, to meet the application programming interface (API) requirements in this final rule.

View the Final Rule in the Federal Register here