Legal Issues May Block Digital Health Records- GAO
504135
Uncertainty surrounding a host of  legal issues may stall adoption of electronic medical records  and U.S. officials have done little to address the problem, a  congressional watchdog agency said Monday.
514413
A trio of ugly situations mean hard times for healthcare organizations too lazy or sloppy to get right with HIPAA requirements. Columnist Jon Espenschied has a secret for making sure you're not next.
642436
U.S. quarantine law is in dire need of an update to protect patient rights, say legal experts.
308635
Reports say desktop search interferes with other engines, but Justice Department isn't eager to reopen case.
50566
Federal officials ignored a host of privacy issues raised during a public comment period on the controversial Real ID Act, ACLU officials charge -- hoping apparently to palm off the problems on the next administration.
158718
The way federal agents search digital devices, such as laptops and BlackBerries, has come under scrutiny in a new lawsuit. "Our position is there should be some suspicion of wrongdoing before the government can search," an attorney says. The government stands by its searches.
348113
At issue is whether makers of medical equipment approved by the federal government may be sued under state law by patients injured by those devices.
334982
Before me lies the patient, a Gateway computer running Windows 98. It is suffering from extremely clogged Internet arteries, unable to reach the Web. As one of The Washington Post's digital doctors, my task is to nurse the machine back to health so my colleague Kathleen Day can access her e-mail and file stories from home.
623376
Congress urged to require standards in health care databases so private firms can exchange information as needed.
433751
The Bush administration has no clear strategy to protect the privacy of patients as it promotes the use of electronic medical records, investigators say.
500090
The U.S. government needs to step up its push for electronic health records because they are not being adopted quickly enough, a group of health advocates said Friday.U.S. healthcare providers continue to make errors that hurt tens of thousands of patients each year, and e-health records could prevent many of those problems, said Dr. Alan Lotvin, senior vice president of oncology for Magellan Health Services Inc. The U.S. healthcare system is failing patients &quot;despite the fact we have the knowledge and the technology to really do a much, much better job.&quot;About 3.5 percent of all U.S. hospital stays have a drug error associated with them, leading to more than 100,000 significant medical problems and nearly 30,000 deaths each year, said Lotvin, speaking at an e-health forum sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Health IT Now Coalition.U.S. residents should have a &quot;sense of outrage&quot; when confronted with these prescription errors, which would largely be prevented with e-health records, Lotvin said. He compared the U.S. health-care system&#39;s record to Amazon.com, which received 2,000 orders per minute during the 2005 holiday shopping season.&quot;I use Amazon a lot -- I have never gotten the wrong book,&quot; he said. &quot;We can&#39;t seem to get the pills from the pharmacy in the basement to Mrs. Smith in room 631 correctly. This is not acceptable.&quot;Lotvin called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would mandate that healthcare providers report their error rates. He also called for a law that would require healthcare providers that have made mistakes on a patient to pay for any subsequent care required. Many medical errors can result in long hospital stays or expensive procedures, and in many cases, patients or their insurance providers pay, he said.&quot;You break it, you fix it,&quot; he said. &quot;That&#39;s a very simple concept. It&#39;s been around in china shops for years.&quot;In addition, the ITIF, in a report released Friday, recommended several steps Congress could take to encourage the adoption of e-health records:*&#160;Congress should pass legislation that supports the adoption of national health data standards. The report mentioned two bills that provide funding and organization at a national level, the Wired for Health Care Quality Act in the Senate, and the Promoting Health Information Technology Act in the House of Representatives.*&#160;Congress should pass a bill to support the creation of health record data banks, data centers where individual patients could store and control their health data. The Independent Health Record Trust Act in the House would regulate data bank operators, prohibiting them from charging fees to health-care providers for accessing or updating an e-health record upon permission of the patient.*&#160;The U.S. government should lead by example by covering the monthly access fees at health record data banks for patients covered by government-funded programs such as Medicare and the State Children&#39;s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).*&#160;Congress should allow patients free access to e-health records held by healthcare providers. Currently, medical privacy laws allow patients to get paper copies of their medical records, but healthcare providers can charge fees for copying and mailing those records. Congress should phase out those fees, a measure that would encourage doctors to move to electronic records, ITIF said.Currently, only about 25 percent of U.S. doctors use e-health records, and only about 10 percent of them have e-health records fully integrated into their practices, ITIF said. But in Sweden, 90 percent of doctors use e-health records, and in Denmark, 88 percent do, according to the ITIF.That shows that adoption in the U.S. is a matter of the right policies and incentives, said Robert Atkinson, ITIF&#39;s president. &quot;This is not rocket science,&quot; he said.More people need to push Congress to create incentives for e-health records, added Nancy Johnson, a former U.S. representative and co-chairwoman of the Health IT Now Coalition.&quot;Why, when we know this would help so much, are we not doing it?&quot; Johnson said. &quot;We know how to deliver a higher quality of care, and we&#39;re not doing it.&quot;
717425
A background check mandated by the federal government for certain contractors as part of a smart-card credentialing program raises serious privacy issues according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has extended an injunction against the practice.
517264
The U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs still aren&#39;t able to share complete electronic health records of military members and veterans despite working on a project for nine years, employees of the two agencies told a congressional committee Wednesday.While the two agencies have begun to share some text records, including discharge summaries and emergency-room reports, it won&#39;t be until 2008 before they can share vital signs of patients, laboratory data, and family histories, said Dr. Gerald Cross, principal deputy undersecretary of health in the VA&#39;s Veterans Health Administration.Officials from both agencies told the U.S. House of Representatives Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations they&#39;re making good progress, but issues remain. &quot;The work to make data computable between two different health-care systems is very complex and requires complete standardization of data,&quot; Cross said.And the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has yet to see a comprehensive plan from the two agencies to share e-health records, added Valerie Melvin, director of human capital and management information systems issues for the GAO. The GAO has issued multiple reports since 2001 calling for VA and DOD to improve their health records sharing, she noted.The agencies have made progress on short-term projects to share data between some health-care centers, she said.&quot;These exchanges are limited, as significant work still remains to achieve the long-term goal of a comprehensive electronic medical record,&quot; Melvin said. It&#39;s unclear how a number of ad hoc projects will fit into an e-health record program, she said.Lawmakers stressed the importance of getting a record-sharing program in place as wounded military members come back from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and will get medical service from both agencies. &quot;This is a critically important issue,&quot; said Rep. Harry Mitchell, an Arizona Democrat and subcommittee chairman. &quot;Thousands of our servicemen and women require and will continue to require significant medical care.&quot;While lawmakers called for the agencies to move faster, the GAO noted some progress. The agencies have developed repositories for health data and are starting to populate them with data, a GAO report said. Seven DOD and VA sites are using an interface to the data repositories, the report said.&quot;Much work&quot; remains before the e-health records sharing system is fully operational, the report said.The DOD and VA effort has been plagued by several setbacks in the past nine years. An interface for a data repository was delayed for more than a year at one point, and in July 2002, the agencies split the project into two initiatives after multiple delays.In July, after nine years of work, the two agencies awarded a contract for a consultant to conduct a feasibility study for a common inpatient health record system.Together, the two agencies have spent more than $1.8 billion on health records initiatives since 1998, according to the GAO.But officials from both agencies expressed optimism. Asked if they could share all data within a year, three officials from the DOD and one from the VA said they expect that to happen.&quot;We are all working toward the same end -- to provide the highest-quality care to our nation&#39;s heroes, past and present,&quot; said Dr. Stephen Jones, the DOD&#39;s principal deputy assistant secretary for health affairs.
152297
SEATTLE -- Washington state&#39;s Medicaid system cannot account for 1.4 million pills, thousands of people who are dead or lack Social Security numbers are receiving benefits and abuse of mental patients may be unreported, auditors believe.
277698
The National Archives wants a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking quick access to records about a health care task force Hillary Rodham Clinton headed as first lady, or delay the release for about a year.
114569
A Congressional inquiry into online data brokers has raised concerns that federal and local law enforcement may be skirting privacy laws to obtain calling records
767610
Internet attorney Eric J. Sinrod says failing to keep your electronic data house in order could put you in a tight legal spot.