The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the guidelines called Stage 3 that will allow users to read and exchange electronic health information. The information will quite accessible, said the authorities concerned.

The guidelines will firstly start as an optional requirement for users in 2017 and next year will be required. Main aim of the initiative is to make the healthcare industry a less of paper-based system. The paper-based system is often confusing owing to factors like doctor's handwriting, patients can misplace them and patients' files can be lost.

Dr. Patrick Conway from CMS said, "We have a shared goal of electronic health records helping physicians, clinicians, and hospitals to deliver better care, smarter spending, and healthier people. We eliminated unnecessary requirements, simplified and increased flexibility for those that remain, and focused on interoperability, information exchange, and patient engagement".

Doctors faced problems using the technology for their individual practices and for their patients. These problems have been well heard and the new rules are expected to improve the reporting methods, ways of patient's progress and to come up with user-friendly ways to access the information.

In order to come up with the final guidelines, CMS has reviewed more than 2,500 comments on the proposed rules. The changes go towards making the Health Information Technology (HIT) a tool for care improvement, making it simple and flexible for users and providing more time for developers to adapt to the system.

"We have a shared goal of electronic health records helping physicians, clinicians, and hospitals to deliver better care, smarter spending, and healthier people. We eliminated unnecessary requirements, simplified and increased flexibility for those that remain, and focused on interoperability, information exchange, and patient engagement," said Dr. Patrick Conway from CMS.