The State Alliance for e-Health is calling on the federal government to work with the states to remedy challenges in current federal statutory and regulatory requirements relating to the privacy of health information.
The recommendation adopted at today’s alliance meeting in Burlington, Vt., represents a turnaround of policy discussions about health information privacy as it relates to using electronic medical records on networks.
At the initiative of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, states have been reviewing their laws and rules with an eye to smoothing the way for electronic exchanges of health records. Their studies have made it clear that there is great variability among the states’ rules and laws, which could be obstacles to health information technology.
But states are not the only ones with varying and potentially conflicting privacy policies, alliance members were told. “Right now, we have sort of a tossed salad of federal laws, just as we do with state laws,” said Sallie Hunt, chief privacy officer at the West Virginia Health Care Authority and leader of a project to create a state health information exchange.
Hunt listed not only the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, but also different federal laws and regulations relating to health information held by schools or to mental health and substance abuse, laboratory results and Medicaid-funded health care.
“Some federal privacy requirements post implementation challenges for health information exchanges,” said Hunt, co-chairwoman of an alliance task force on privacy issues.
The alliance accepted a task force recommendation that the state-level organization work with the government’s executive branch on changes in some of the federal laws and rules.
The alliance also agreed to continue to work to reduce the variability of state privacy requirements within states and across their borders.
The alliance also voted to recommend that state medical, nursing and pharmacy boards work to implement online application forms for licensing, and that states make their application processes more uniform.
The alliance is an organization within the National Governors Association, although the alliance includes legislators and other state officials in addition to governors.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
