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| Thompson Urged To Make Critical Changes To
HIPAA |
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WASHINGTON, October 24, 2001
– The nation's leading health care and employer organizations are asking
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to make critical changes to the HIPAA privacy
rules. In a letter signed by the Healthcare Leadership Council (a coalition of
chief executives from the nation's top health care companies), the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, the Health Insurance Association of America and nearly two dozen
other organizations, Secretary Thompson is being asked to address flaws in the
privacy rules in areas ranging from research to oral
communications.
According to the letter, "new rulemaking is urgently
needed" in several areas, including:
- Medical research: The letter states that
the current regulations will have a "chilling effect" on medical research
because they will "adversely affect" researchers' ability to gather and use
patient information.
- Prior consent: The group advocates changes
to the current regulations that would allow providers to use patient
information for "treatment, payment and health care operations" without
obtaining consent first.
- Oral communications: The organizations
state that the current regulations would prohibit verbal communications between
providers and patients that are "necessary for treatment."
- "Minimum necessary" provision: The groups
advocate the elimination of the "confusing" provision that bans providers from
using any personal medical information beyond the minimum necessary to
accomplish a given purpose.
"These changes are necessary in order for
these patient privacy regulations to achieve its two critical goals," said Mary
Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council. "We need to protect
patient privacy, but we also need to maintain the free flow of information
necessary for medical research and quality health care. There are still too
many barriers in these regulations that will have an adverse effect on
patients, health care consumers and health care providers. These changes need
to be made, and they need to be made soon. Hospitals, pharmacists and other
health care providers are already investing resources in new systems in order
to comply with these regulations." |
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