As electronic medical records and large research databases composed of hundreds of thousands of individuals become increasingly common, privacy and security are becoming increasing concerns. Panelists at the Health Information Exchange Stakeholder Summit 2012 urged for information systems to be designed with privacy in mind from the beginning.
One suggestion came from Joanne McNabb, director of privacy education and policy in the privacy enforcement and protection unit of the California Department of Justice. McNabb said that systems should be able to flag anomalous data and be able to update corrections to medical record errors everywhere that the information has been saved. This way, updates don’t have to be manually entered, which would prevent new errors from appearing.
Medical and privacy personnel are already working to protect patient records. Robin Bowe, a compliance coordinator and privacy officer for Kern Medical Center, said that the medical center’s multidisciplinary team from billing, health information management and compliance confirmed eight cases of misused identity. The fraud totaled about $92,000, highlighting the importance of hospitals helping patients who have been victims of fraud.
However, work on privacy won’t be limited to hospitals or the private sector in general. Deven McGraw, the director of the Health Privacy Project for the Center for Democracy & Technology, rated the federal government on their handling of privacy issues.
According to McGraw, the federal government failed due to not finalizing changes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. The delay has meant that businesses and others using the data are unclear on their obligations to privacy.
McGraw said that the federal government did do a good job at ensuring that consumers are able to view and download portions of their health data.
