Electronic Health Reporter

Healthcare has a new acronym – OBRHI. Quite a mouthful. Perhaps “Aubrey” is a little easier to say.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the creation of a new office, the Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics. It is designed to reduce friction and regulatory and administrative burden between itself and caregivers – “to further the goal of putting patients first, the organization said in a statement.

PER CMS, this office is an “outgrowth” of its Patients over Paperwork (PoP) Initiative, meant to cut administrative red tape across the health system. Additionally, the agency said it seeks reform through the office to eliminate “duplicative, unnecessary and excessively costly requirements and regulations.”

As part of the PoP Initiative — focused on reducing the unnecessary regulatory burden to allow providers to concentrate on their primary mission – these efforts and the office’s creation hope to save clinicians $6.6 billion and 42 million burden hours through 2021.

“As part of our efforts to date, CMS has heard from over 2,500 providers, clinicians, administrative staff, health care leaders, beneficiaries and their support teams through 158 site visits and listening sessions,” the agency said. “Through more than 10 Requests for Information (RFI) combined with stakeholder interviews, CMS also has over 15,000 comments to assist us in our burden reduction efforts.”

CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in the agency’s statement: “Specifically, the work of this new office will be targeted to help reduce unnecessary burden, increase efficiencies, continue administrative simplification, increase the use of health informatics, and improve the beneficiary experience.”

In its effort to streamline, CMS says it’s seeing “significant results,” including removing unnecessary, obsolete or excessively burdensome conditions of participation for hospitals and other healthcare providers previously spent on paperwork and faster processing of state requests to make program or benefit changes to their respective Medicaid programs through the state plan amendment and section 1915 waiver review process. 

“The new office will strengthen CMS’s efforts across Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Marketplace to decrease the hours and costs clinicians and providers incur for CMS-mandated compliance,” the agency said.

OBRHI (or “Aubrey”) may also increase the number of clinicians, providers, and health plans CMS engages, it says, to ensure it gains a better understanding of how various regulatory burdens impact healthcare delivery.

Aubrey also will focus on health informatics development, the use and application of health data and clinical information to healthcare, as well as furthering interoperability innovation.

Time will tell if OBRHI is just another red-tape agency or if it reaches its intended goal of improving communication with caregivers and driving healthcare innovation. Lovers of big government, applaud, Those who feel the government-run programs like the DMV are the pinnacle of customer service, furrow your brow.