Understanding Permissible Exceptions
The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) prohibits information blocking, meaning any activity or policy that is likely to interfere with access, exchange, or use of electronic health information (EHI), except as required by law or covered by specific exceptions. ONC has defined eight exceptions to the information blocking rules. The following text is a high-level summary of the exceptions. For more thorough descriptions and key considerations for each exception, refer to the ONC Information Blocking Exceptions Fact Sheet .
Preventing Harm Exception
It will not be information blocking for an actor to engage in practices that are reasonable and necessary to prevent harm to a patient or another person, provided certain conditions are met.
Privacy Exception
It will not be information blocking if an actor does not fulfill a request to access, exchange, or use EHI in order to protect an individual’s privacy, provided certain conditions are met.
Security Exception
It will not be information blocking for an actor to interfere with the access, exchange, or use of EHI in order to protect the security of EHI, provided certain conditions are met.
Infeasibility
Exception It will not be information blocking if an actor does not fulfill a request to access, exchange, or use EHI due to the infeasibility of the request, provided certain conditions are met.
Health IT Performance Exception
It will not be information blocking for an actor to take reasonable and necessary measures to make health IT temporarily unavailable or to degrade the health IT's performance for the benefit of the overall performance of the health IT, provided certain conditions are met.
Content and Manner Exception
It will not be information blocking for an actor to limit the content of their response to a request to access, exchange, or use EHI or the manner in which it fulfills a request to access, exchange, or use EHI, provided certain conditions are met.
Fees Exception
It will not be information blocking for an actor to charge fees, including fees that result in a reasonable profit margin, for accessing, exchanging, or using EHI, provided certain conditions are met.
Licensing Exception
It will not be information blocking for an actor to license interoperability elements for EHI to be accessed, exchanged, or used, provided certain conditions are met.
Actions that do not meet the conditions of an exception will not automatically constitute information blocking. Instead, such actions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether information blocking has occurred.