Healthcare Privacy Concerns

By Mark Brousseau

Health IT and electronic health information exchange have tremendous potential to improve health care quality, reduce costs, and empower consumers, Deven McGraw, executive director, Health Privacy Project/Center for Democracy & Technology, said today during a presentation at the Seventh National Medical Banking Summit in Nashville, TN.

“The public wants health IT, but the public also has significant privacy concerns,” McGraw told attendees. “Failure to build a foundation of trust is an obstacle to achieving greater health IT adoption. For years, there was no progress on resolving the privacy and security issues related to health IT. But the recent stimulus plan bulldozes those obstacles.”

McGraw said the stimulus plan addresses health IT privacy and security issues in several ways:

… Substantive changes to HIPAA statutory provisions and privacy and security regulations
… Enhanced enforcement of HIPAA
… Provisions to address health information by some entities not covered by HIPAA

What do you think? Post your comments below.