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HIPAA

Is HITECH Working? #7: Where’s Plan B? Congress and ONC need to address major flaws in HITECH.

by Vince Kuraitis JD, MBA and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA

Pop quiz: Among early-stage companies that are successful, what percentage are successful with the initial business model with which they started (Plan A) vs. a secondary business model (Plan B)?

Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen studied this issue.  He found that among successful companies, only 7% succeeded with their initial business model, while 93% evolved into a different business model.

So let’s take this finding and reexamine our human nature. In light of these statistics, […]

Complimentary Webinar: Introduction to Clinical Groupware and the Clinical Groupware Collaborative

BrightTALK is sponsoring a complimentary Electronic Health Record Summit this Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

David C. Kibbe MD, MBA and I will be presenting “Introduction to Clinical Groupware and the Clinical Groupware Collaborative”

Clinical groupware is a new and evolving model for the development and deployment of health information technology (HIT) platforms and applications having the following characteristics:

Use of the Internet and the web for EHR technology.

Explicit design for information sharing and online communication among providers and patients/consumers.

A modular […]

Privacy Law Showdown? Legal and Policy Analysis.

#2 in a series — Modifications to HIPAA Privacy Laws: Impact on Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, and other PHRs. 

by Deven McGraw JD, MPH, Center for Democracy & Technology

Introduction

There has been considerable discussion lately about whether or not the stimulus legislation (ARRA) extends HIPAA coverage to commercial vendors of personal health records (PHRs) any time they contract with entities already covered by HIPAA like hospitals, health plans or physicians groups.  (For those of you who don’t know, HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and […]

Privacy Law Showdown? Setting the Stage

Today’s post is the first in a series entitled:

Modifications to HIPAA Privacy Laws: Impact on Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, and other PHRs. 

We’ll explore how recent changes in privacy provisions of  ARRA/HITECH Federal stimulus legislation affect personal health information (PHI) platform companies (e.g., HealthVault, Google Health,  Dossia) and personal health record (PHR) companies.

Health IT expert and journalist Neil Versel described the issue in the April 7 issue of BNET Healthcare:

Although Google and Microsoft have gotten plenty of attention for their Web-based personal health records, both companies have long […]

Dogged Optimism: Five Innovative Aspects of HITECH

If you’re a dog (an innovator), what’s there to smile about over HITECH?  Quite a bit.

In the first post of this series, I suggested that HITECH favors cats by about 60/40 and noted that the single most cat-like feature of HITECH is providing incentives for physicians and hospitals to acquire and implement EHRs  — but only EHRs. Reader “Mark” commented:

“How does this work out to 60/40? Looks to me like 100% cats.”

Let’s look a bit deeper to see how HITECH […]

Dorothy Tillman Update: Vindication!

About a year ago, we read about about Dorothy Tillman’s heroic efforts to get a copy of her aunt’s  medical records.

Here’s a recap:  On a Saturday evening Dorothy took her 86 year old aunt to a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama. Frustrated after an overnight stay in the ER which she said yielded “little treatment”, she requested a copy of her aunt’s medical records before leaving. When she was told that it was hospital policy to request records “in writing”, Dorothy escalated her […]

Leavitt’s Framework Shoehorns the HIPAA Privacy Rule onto Your Personal Health Information

by Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA

Have you ever heard anyone tell a happy story of how easy it is to get a copy of their paper medical records?

Departing Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt is laying the groundwork for this same story to apply to access to YOUR electronic personal health information.

Here’s an overview to what evolved into a long posting:

Analysis: The Leavitt Framework Uses the HIPAA Privacy Rule as a Baseline for Electronic Access to Personal Health Information
Implication: Extending […]

Heartburn Relief: UnitedHealth Joining Google Health and MSFT HealthVault?

From the August 6 edition of HISTalk — Healthcare IT News and Opinion:

"Re: UHG. Was at the Healthcare Quality Conference yesterday in Boston. Got to talking to a United Health exec who informed me that they have signed an agreement with Google Health and have a pending agreement with HealthVault. This backs up UHG’s previous statement that member records would be made portable. Individual made mention that the Google Health relationship extends beyond just claims records transfer and includes a […]

Is the Medical Establishment the Best Guardian of Your Medical Data?

David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA and Vince Kuraitis

Drs. Mandl and Kohane begin their recent article in NEJM with the statement that “large corporations are seeking an integral and transformative role in the management of health care information,” and then warn that this “will profoundly affect the biomedical research enterprise.”   

At issue for the authors is who controls the information about you and me, our health and healthcare data. Without coming right out and saying it directly, they worry that data in […]