Prioritizing Values
I have recently been attending a range of webinar meetings being held by federal and private healthcare stakeholders that are trying to get their arms around the Health IT mandates that are included in the Obama stimulus and health reform plans. The big cahuna in healthcare is the HIPAA security and privacy regulations that were meant to protect the private health information of individuals.The HIPAA law was laid on top of existing state and local rules that were already in existance at the time that HIPAA was passed. For some states, these existing laws were more stringent than the HIPAA rules which means that they ‘trump’ HIPAA.
This situation was created largely because of the influence of special interests on the final langugage that was able to be passed as HIPAA security and privacy rules. The result is a patchwork of privacy and security rules that are state specific and are standing in the way of health information exchange.
For those of us who have long been on the side of privacy and security it seems as though the value of being able to exchange health information is being viewed, in some situations, as contrary to the value of security and privacy.
Do you believe that it is possible to meet all of the ambitious goals of health information exchange and still protect the privacy and security of the data? If not, how do you see this all shaking out in the end and, if forced to choose, which do you see as the more important action, data exchange or security and privacy?
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