In a press release from September 3, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced that it will increase resources dedicated to curbing “information blocking” activity. HHS asserts that the Department will take an active enforcement stance against health care entities that “restrict patients’ engagement in their care by blocking the access, exchange, and use of electronic health information.” Rules targeting information blocking practices arise from the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law in 2016, and were designed to help accelerate new innovations and advances in the delivery of patient care by promoting electronic health information exchange.

HHS indicated that this recent announcement serves as a warning to actors still engaging in information blocking to come into compliance with the rules governing the flow of patient information. The Department's release notes that the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ASTP/ONC) and HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) will take “enforcement actions to hold those who block patient information accountable and to prevent future violations.” 

Last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a final rule to adopt penalties (referred to as “disincentives” in the rule) for health care providers that are found to have engaged in information blocking.  That rule adopted several of the “disincentives” that can result from non-compliance with the information blocking rules, including: 

• Denial of eligibility to hospitals or critical access hospitals (CAHs) as meaningful electronic health record (EHR) users with the loss of 75 percent of the annual market basket increase to hospitals, and reductions in Medicare payments to CAHs to 100 percent of reasonable costs rather than the current 101 percent. 
• Loss of eligibility as meaningful users of certified EHR technology in a performance period resulting in a zero score under Medicare's Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) payments to physicians. 
• Making providers or suppliers that are Accountable Care Organization (ACO) participants ineligible to participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program for a period of at least one year.

Issuance of the press release should be viewed as a signal to hospital radiology departments and imaging centers that continue to universally embargo radiology reports to consider steps to ensure immediate patient access. We note that imaging providers are permitted under the information blocking rules to make individualized determinations in good faith to hold back certain patient's reports without it being considered interference. 

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to follow the OIG's investigations, as well as the ongoing actions by imaging providers to expedite reporting of radiology test results directly to patients.