U.S. Bill Proposes E-Health Records Incentives
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Doctors would get $3 for every patient signed up to use an electronic health record under terms of a new House bill introduced today.
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Within five years, physicians could be able to access patients&#39; records from any hospital or doctors&#39; office in the state under a new ``eHealth&#39;&#39; initiative financed with an infusion
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WASHINGTON -- U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.
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The Texas House of Representatives has approved a bill that would allow local courthouse clerks  to disclose "in the ordinary course of business" Social Security numbers contained in public records maintained by their offices.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. needs new medical privacy rules as the country moves toward greater use of IT to store health records, a group of health-care experts said Wednesday. "Thousands" of databases that contain U.S. residents' health records exist, and patients don't have any way to keep their personal information from being shared with third parties, said Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist and founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation. Private companies have been data-mining prescription records for years, she added. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996, sets security standards that health-care providers must follow, but the law leaves major gaps in privacy, Peel said at an electronic health-records privacy forum sponsored by public relations firm Dittus Communications. HIPAA gave many organizations with ties to health-care vendors, including offshore transcription vendors, insurance brokers and credit bureaus, authorization to use health care-records, she said. "Because of this confusion that HIPAA engendered, data is being exchanged and used for reasons that have nothing to do with people getting well," she said. "People think this is the wild west because of HIPAA, and every piece of data that's not nailed down can be used for some other purpose." While panelists at the forum seemed to agree that some type of privacy policy for e-health records is needed, they did not agree on how to accomplish it. Peel called for the U.S. government to create a national standard, but David Merritt, project director at the Center for Health Transformation and the Gingrich Group, called for private groups to develop privacy standards. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed moving a privacy commission to the private sector, but a bill sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, would keep that commission in the federal government. In addition, Kala Evelyn Ladenheim, program director for state health policy leadership at the National Conference of State Legislators, called on the federal government to allow states to develop their own privacy policies. Some states may create stronger protections than a national effort would, she said. But 50 state privacy policies would be difficult for health providers to comply with, countered Tom Wilder, senior regulatory counsel for America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group representing health insurance providers. In most other industries, private organizations have developed privacy policies, Merritt said. He called on a public and private partnership to create privacy standards. "The government is really good at creating commissions and creating advisory boards ... and studying an issue," he said. "What the government is not good at, and what we shouldn't ask it to do, is to lead and to act." Peel disagreed, saying health-care providers would have conflicts when creating privacy standards, and HHS employees may not have the public's best interest in mind. "We would actually say the problem is that the government is not in the lead," she said. "Unelected officials, bureaucrats and conflicted industry representatives shouldn't be making decisions about privacy."
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Health care advocates say government support of electronic data can improve care and prevent errors.
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Makers of drugs and medical devices would be required to report publicly nearly all payments and gifts to doctors under legislation introduced Thursday in the Senate.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote as early as Thursday on a bill that would require a paper record for electronic voting machines. Representative Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which has 216 cosponsors in the 435-member House, would require that all e-voting machines used in the November 2008 U.S. elections be accompanied by a voter-verified paper ballot. E-voting critics have been calling for paper-trail ballots for several years, arguing there's no way to audit e-voting machines without them. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, said on his Web site that he's pleased the House is set to move forward with the legislation. His bill would require random audits of voting results in 3 percent of all U.S. precincts, and it would prohibit e-voting machines that include wireless or Internet connections. While groups like Common Cause and VerifiedVoting.org have called for paper trails, groups like the National Federation of the Blind have resisted efforts to slow the adoption of e-voting machines, saying e-voting allows blind people to vote without assistance for the first time. The Holt bill faces several obstacles to becoming law, said Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports the bill. "It is not at all clear whether the bill will pass or, even if it does, whether a substantively similar companion bill will then pass the Senate," Zimmerman wrote on the EFF blog. "Like it or not, with election officials arguing that they're running out of time to implement wholesale changes, this likely amounts to Congress's only attempt to make any serious improvements to the nation's election procedures ahead of the 2008 presidential election." Common Cause sent an alert to members Wednesday morning, urging them to contact lawmakers in support of the bill, said Mary Boyle, a Common Cause spokeswoman. "This is the last chance for Congress to ensure that ballots are backed by paper records in the critical 2008 presidential election," she said.
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The Food and Drug Administration approved an implantable computer chip that can pass a patient's medical details to doctors, speeding care.
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Legislation that would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses may soon get a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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The Identity Cards Bill, published today, seeks to create by 2010 a system of ID cards with embedded chips that carry personal information and biometric identifiers.
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(InfoWorld) - Members of the U.S. Congress introduced a flurry of new technology-related bills this week, including two bills that would require companies with data breaches to notify affected customers. Senators Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, introduced the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act. In addition to requiring data breach notification, the bill would also require data brokers to disclose what information they hold on individuals. The bill would allow individuals to correct information held by data brokers, and it would require companies that have databases with personal information on more than 10,000 U.S. residents to implement data privacy and security programs. Representatives Bobby Rush, a Illinois Democrat, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, introduced the Data Accountability and Trust Act this week. Their bill, with 24 co-sponsors, authorizes the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to draw up data privacy requirements for businesses, including requirements that they have vulnerability assessments and policies for disposing of obsolete data. After a company reports a data breach, the FTC would conduct an audit of its security practices, and, like the Leahy-Sanders bill, the bill would require data brokers to disclose the information they hold on individuals and allow individuals to correct wrong information. Organizations have lost 100 million personal records belonging to U.S. residents in data breaches since 2005, Leahy said in a speech on the Senate floor. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, singled outÂ data breaches at the U.S. Department of Veterans AffairsÂ last May andÂ retailer The TJX Companies,Â announced in January, in his speech. "These data security breaches are compelling examples of why we need strong federal data privacy and security laws to protect Americansâ personal data and to address the ills of lax data security," he said. "In the information age, any company that wants to be trusted by the public must earn that trust by vigilantly protecting the databases they use and maintain." Members of Congress introduced about a dozen bills requiring data breach notification after a series of breaches in early 2005, but legislation stalled largely over committee jurisdictional wrangling. About 30 states have passed breach notification laws, most of them since 2005. The Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a trade group of IT security vendors, in January called on Congress to pass a comprehensive data protection bill, including breach notification. But some groups, including conservative think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation, have questioned the need for a breach notification law, saying the cost to businesses may far outweigh the benefits to consumers. Other tech-related bills introduced this week: -- Two bills allowing the FTC toÂ investigate the practice of pretexting, when an investigator assumes a false identity to gain access to a person's telephone records. President George Bush signed a bill creating penalties for pretexting in January, but the two new bills would give the FTC the authority to investigate and prosecute pretexters. Many lawmakers became interested in the issue afterÂ Hewlett-Packard disclosedÂ in September that investigators it had hired used pretexting in an attempt to gain access to board members' and reporters' phone records. -- A bill targeted at spyware by establishing criminal penalties for a number of actions. The bill would prohibit keystroke logging, taking control of a computer without the user's consent, diverting Web browsers, using computers to create botnets and modifying a computer users' browser and security settings without permission. Two spyware bills passed the House of Representatives by overwhelming majorities in March 2005, but the Senate didn't act on them. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Two large health insurance trade groups based in the U.S. have released a model for personal health records, a portable, Web-based tool that includes a customer's insurance claims, immunization records, medication records and other health information. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, whose members provide health insurance to about two thirds of U.S. residents, unveiled the personal health record model Wednesday. The two groups saw the importance of working together on the project, said Susan Pisano, vice president of communications for AHIP. "This is really an effort that cries out for collaboration," she said. U.S. President George Bush has pushed for electronic health records to be available to all U.S. residents by 2014. Backers of such records say they will improve the efficiency of the U.S. health-care system and cut down on errors such as drug interaction problems. Personal health records, or PHRs, "may be one of our most important contributions to helping improve health care," Ronald Williams chairman, chief executive and president of insurer Aetna Inc., said in a statement. PHRs are similar to other electronic health records, although they include less specific treatment information. Electronic health records typically are used by health-care providers to store and manage detailed clinical information. Patients will be able to enter information into their PHRs, in addition to information from pharmacies, laboratories and medical providers, the groups said. The model released Wednesday includes definitions of data elements that should be included in PHRs, such as risk factors, family history, health-care facilities and medications taken. The model also includes standards for the PHRs to be portable between insurers and providers, and rules about when insurers can share the information. Insurers can send the information to a new insurer only after the patient gives consent and has enrolled in the new insurance plan, Pisano said. Those tight sharing rules were designed to address concerns about the PHRs used by insurance underwriters, she said. The PHR model also set 2008 as the deadline for insurers to incorporate the data elements and adopt the portability standards, she added. The groups said the U.S. is still "many years" away from a fully interoperable health records system. But Dr. Robert Kolodner, interim national coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, praised the groups' efforts. The new model is a "step forward in the national health IT agenda," he said in a statement. Earlier this month, five major corporations -- Applied Materials Inc., British Petroleum America Inc., Intel Corp., Pitney Bowes Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- announced plans to fund the development of a Web-based system that would allow their employees and retirees to access and maintain personal medical records. The companies said the plan could help them cut health-care costs.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates asked the U.S. Congress to pass a comprehensive privacy law this year, allowing consumers to control how their personal information is used. Gates repeated past Microsoft calls for a wide-ranging privacy law during a speech at advocacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology's (CDT) annual gala dinner Wednesday. A comprehensive privacy bill should allow consumers to control their personal data, should provide transparency about what their data is used for, and should notify them when their data has been compromised, Gates said. Gates said he believes the U.S. can achieve a balance between privacy and protecting the country against terrorists and other criminals. But the balance will not be an easy one to create, Gates said. While many U.S. residents would say they want as much privacy "as possible," law enforcement needs to be able to track criminals, Gates said. "These privacy issues are not as easy as you might think," he told the crowd. Gates hinted that some privacy protections can go so far that they become annoying to consumers. He talked about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed by Congress in 1996, which puts strict controls on the release of information. HIPAA too often asks patients to sign documents allowing the release of their medical records, he said. HIPAA is evidence "we don't always get it right the first time," Gates said. "All I know is I keep signing those forms." Another balance Congress needs to strike is between emerging technologies and privacy, said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy also called on Congress to pass a privacy law. But a privacy law cannot restrict new technologies, Leahy said. "I don't want to stop the technologies, I want to protect our privacy," he during the gala dinner. "I think we can do both." The U.S. government spying on its residents is of particular concern, Leahy said. "I don't want to put a brake on technology, but on what my government can learn about me without letting me know," he said. Leahy and Gates both said they have great hopes for the future of the Internet. "The Internet is a great tool," Leahy said. "Let's keep it a free tool." The world is just at the beginning of the potential of the Internet coupled with personal computers, Gates added. Coming advances in storage, in bandwidth and in user-created content will make the Internet and even greater tool for democratic ideals, he said. "We're just at the very beginning," he said.
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An improved ability to share medical records electronically via IT systems is still many years away, according to health care industry officials who testified at a U.S. House hearing.
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Democratic lawmakers in Congress introduced legislation yesterday that would require makers of drugs and medical devices to register clinical trials of their products in a public database when they start and report the test results on it.
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Electronic health records -- touted by policymakers as a way to improve the quality of health care -- failed to boost care delivered in routine doctor visits, U.S. researchers said on Monday.