Will HIPAA changes torpedo health IT stimulus?

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It depends on who's doing the interpretation

There are some greedy-butt lawyers out there scare-mongering people into thinking that their life depends on not giving name rank and serial number to anyone; and to telling them that if they do, they can get multi-million dollar settlements out it.

HIPAA's first purpose was to enable hospitals and physician's offices to exchange information on insured patients with the insurance companies so that they could get paid for the work done that was covered by the policies; and to do it in a manner that got the right information associated with the right patient, the right account, and the right policy.

HIPAA's secondary purpose was to protect people's health information from being released to people who didn't have a need for it that wasn't in the patient's self-interest to reveal.

We've seen massive benefits coming out of the human genome project. The return on investment in that has, and will continue, to blow away the few billion dollars invested in it.

The same thing can happen with technology applied to the health care IT stimulus. The capacity exists to greatly reduce medical care errors and oversights, and hence, costs, with a comprehensive, centrally-accessible, well-designed patient medical record.

It needs to be primarily be accessible by the patient, the patient's care giver(s), and the patient's insurance company(s). The patient needs to be able to authorize people to access their record in a timely manner. The system needs to provide secure authentication of the people asking for access to the information.

The secondary purpose of this database is to enable it to be used as a research tool. But it has to be done in a way that won't exploit the people recorded in the database. This research tool will enable us to find better treatment regimens, identify environmental health risks, track epidemics, identify health promoters, and other benefits we can't imagine at this time.

Posted by: Dr_Zinj   Posted on: 03/20/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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