Petition Demands Privacy for Electronic Health Records

Petition Demands Privacy for Electronic Health Records
By M.L. Baker
Ziff-Davis Media
10/28/2005 3:52:00

PMHealth information technology legislation is swirling around Capitol Hill this week, and there's no shortage of recommendations of how it should be done.

Privacy advocacy groups began circulating a petition Thursday to bar employers from viewing patients' health information and giving patients control over who can see what medical information.

The heads of the two advocacy groups who wrote the petition say that, designed properly, electronic health records can protect privacy better than their paper counterparts.

Electronic Health Record (EHR)

The use of e-prescribing and electronic health records is accelerating 

On October 11, 2005, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ("CMS") and the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General ("OIG") published separate, but parallel, proposed rules representing a unified effort to advance the goal of widespread adoption of electronic health records technologies by hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers. These proposed rules are in accordance with the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 ("MMA"), which directed the Secretary of HHS, in consultation with the Attorney General, to create an exception to the Stark law and a safe harbor under the Anti-Kickback Statute to protect certain arrangements involving the provision of non-monetary remuneration (consisting of items and services in the form of hardware, software, or information technology and training services) that is necessary and used solely to receive and transmit electronic prescription drug information.