June 20, 2025
The Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medical Association (PALTmed) recently urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to develop and fund initiatives giving post-acute care settings interoperable health information technology (IT) tools.
“Today’s healthcare environment is defined by a worsening clinician shortage, particularly in PALTC and rural settings,” the organization said in a letter this week to Mehmed Oz, MD, administrator of CMS. “To maintain continuity of care and reduce avoidable hospitalizations, clinicians must be empowered with digital tools that enable them to manage patients across settings efficiently. Interoperable, user-friendly systems can help offset workforce limitations by reducing administrative burdens, streamlining communication, and ensuring timely access to clinical data.”
PALTmed, a medical specialty society that represents medical directors, physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other practitioners in various post-acute settings including home care, also recommended that CMS prioritize broadband expansion in rural and underserved areas; support PALTC-specific EHR functionality, such as transitional care management; include PALTC clinicians, leaders and stakeholders in the development of interoperability standards and policy proposals; and incentivize infrastructure investment in long-term care providers, which were excluded from earlier federal EHR funding programs.
“To succeed in delivering value-based care, we must treat the health system as an interconnected whole, ensuring that PALTC is equipped with the infrastructure, funding and policy support it needs to thrive, not just survive, in the digital era,” PALTmed said.
The letter was in response to a Request for Information from CMS on the Health Technology Ecosystem. Home care providers frequently lament the underinvestment in home care health information technology.
“If we go back 15 or 20 years, there’s been these efforts to promote interoperability, HIT, connectivity and all of that, but there’s been really nothing that’s been a focus for the field (home care) that is probably the most challenged,” Al Cardillo, president of the Home Care Association of New York State (HCANYS), told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse Monday last November.
A January 2024 report by the Department of Health and Human Services found that post-acute care organizations have not received the same support as other care settings for creating interoperable patient data tools.
