HHS Finalizes HTI-5, Narrowing Health IT Certification and Deferring Information Blocking
ONC's Oct. 26, 2026 HTI-5 final rule narrows health IT certification requirements and defers key information blocking changes, resetting compliance exposure for health systems, health IT vendors, and health data holders.
ONC released the HTI-5 final rule on Oct. 26, 2026, titled "Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: ONC Deregulatory Actions to Unleash Prosperity." As summarized in the source, the rule narrows the scope of health IT certification requirements and defers changes to information blocking rules; HHS also issued an associated cost estimate.
Why sophisticated counsel should care: information blocking and certified-health-IT obligations have anchored multi-year compliance programs at hospitals, health data platforms, and their technology vendors. A narrowed certification regime plus deferred information blocking changes can alter whether and when a client is subject to particular obligations, touching regulatory exposure for data-access disputes, vendor remediation and indemnity allocation, and the disclosure posture of health data exchange arrangements. The action also arrives while state health data privacy statutes and state-level information blocking rules remain unaffected, so the federal deregulatory shift does not close state-law gaps.
Concrete next steps: watch the effective date, which certification criteria are withdrawn, and the revised information blocking compliance dates; clients should re-baseline gap analyses, vendor contract terms, and disclosure strategies once the text is available. The source summary does not itemize the deferred provisions, so precise scope should be confirmed against the rule text.