LexMonitor

Healthcare IT and Privacy at war: BNA has a report (subscription required) on some current conflicting letters urging action by the new Congress on healthcare IT and patient privacy. It seems the Confidentiality Coalition is urging Congress to encourage and stimulate spending on healthcare IT, but...

FTC report on use of social security numbers: I've stated over and over, the biggest problem with medical data theft/loss is the fact that the information can be used for fraud, ID theft, or related evils, not that the medical part of the information could be used for any value (other than the...

New Hampshire State DHHS data leak: Here's a data leak story with a special twist: it was the New Hampshire state department of Health and Human Services that inadvertently leaked records of state participants in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit plan. A spreadsheet was inadvertently...

More EMR vs Privacy stuff: As long as we're navel-gazing re what the new administration may do with EMRs, it seems HHS has also issued a "framework" for the electronic exchange of PHI. It is HHS' way of trying to note, and strike a balance between, the needs for electronic information interchange...

Somewhat off topic: Joint Commission HIT Safety Alert: The Joint Commission has issues a Sentinel Event Alert to its accredited hospitals, warning them about potential problems caused by the use of certain technologies, particularly things like computerized physician order entry, electronic...

HIMSS Blueprint: The Health Information and Management Systems Society has published its own "call to action" to offer recommendations and priorities to reform the healthcare system. How? Of course, through better health information technology. Hat tip: Alan Goldberg

Family Medical History: In January, the Surgeon General is going to unveil a program that will allow people to record their family medical histories and load them onto a government website, so they could be accessed and used for future healthcare needs of the person recording the information and...

Politics and EMRs

New push for EMRs? Some folks (not surprisingly those with an economic interest in such a strategy) are strongly advocating to the new Obama administration that greater use of electronic medical records is a necessary part of any healthcare reform. Of course, that's half the story; what about...

Colorado cross-entity electronic PHI file-sharing: Kaiser Permanente and the ER departments at Children's Hospital, Denver Health and Hospital Authority, and UC Hospital, working with the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CoRHIO), will share access to lab results, medication...

California Snoopin', Cedars Sinai version: Less an identity theft or tabloid trash story, this time a hospital employee stole patient identifier information and used it to bill insurance companies for phony lab charges for those patients. Also different from earlier California Snoopin' problems,...