News

Under programs set up by the Affordable Care Act, the federal government cuts payments to hospitals that have high rates of readmissions and those with the highest numbers of infections and patient injuries.

So if patients are stuck in energy canyons, connecting with peers may be one of the best ways to give each other the energy boost needed to spark action.

Experts with perspectives from outside of medicine should be welcomed to any serious discussion of how to improve patient safety, and their insights heeded.

To increase use of these tools, healthcare practitioners could encourage individuals with cancer to use their online medical record by highlighting its benefits. ONCs Patient Engagement Playbook and Guide to Getting and Using your Health Record deliver tips to providers and patients for making this process easier.

The email, which was written by Epic CEO Judy Faulkner and addressed to CEOs and presidents of hospital systems, urges recipients to sign a letter alongside Epic that voices disapproval for rules the Department of Health and Human Services proposed in 2019. These rules aim to make it easy for patients to access their health information at no cost, and make it more challenging for companies to block access to that information.

In summary:

HIPAAs rules were not designed to address privacy risks introduced by widespread personal information collection and use in the modern digital ecosystem. HIPAAs rules were designed to support information flows within the health care system and allow for broad uses and disclosures of data by both covered entities and business associates without the need to obtain patient consent. HIPAA is leaky it expressly allows covered entities and business associates to share data outside of HIPAA, including selling de-identified data, without patient consent. HIPAAs rules protect data and also protect incumbents interests in controlling health data. Ultimately Congressional action is needed to establish meaningful privacy protections for personal data.

It seems that the definition of a barbarian is anyone who aims to get patient records under the current laws and the explicit direction of the patient. The opposite of barbarians, whoever they may be within the gates of HIPAA, are able to get patient records without consent or accounting for disclosures by asserting Treatment, Payment, or Operations as well as the pretense of de-identification. Meanwhile, these HIPAA non-barbarians are able to sell off the machine learning and other medical science teachings as trade secret intellectual property in the form of computer decision support and other for-profit algorithms. This hospital-led privatization of open medicine will contribute to the next round of US healthcare exceptionalism.And as for the patients, no worries; well just tell them its about patient safety.

The area I will be watching in 2020 is whether the HHS makes a meaningful change in its enforcement of HIPAA access rights. There are clear indicationsfrom a highly publicized Ciitizen study and otherwisethat access is an ongoing problem. At the same time, there is a sense in the regulated community that access violations are small potatoes.

The proposed rules, currently under White House review, would allow patients to access their health information and share it with third-party apps, require hospitals to send notifications of admits, discharges or transfers, penalize information blocking and allow researchers and doctors to share screenshots of software to promote safety.Story Continued Below

The Department of Health and Human Services, led by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), released the draft 2020-2025 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (plan) for public comment. This plan, which was developed in collaboration withover 25 federal organizations, is intended to guide federal health information technology (IT) activities.