June 2001 • Volume 7 • Number 6
Privacy, security and you
BY JANE STOEVER
You protect your patients' privacy as a matter of course. The federal government, within a few years, will take steps to make confidentiality a cornerstone of health care across the country.
The idea's great. The federal rules may, at first, be hard to swallow.
Privacy regs. On April 12, President George W. Bush said the privacy regulations for the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act should be implemented. The administration has already suggested the rules will be modified before they go into effect in February 2003.
Through the privacy regulations, patients will have new rights to access their personal health information and control its use and disclosure, even disclosure to physicians' lawyers and accountants. Medical practices will need to obtain patients' consent and authorization and monitor the privacy policies of physicians' business associates.
Security regs. By fall, the administration may release the HIPAA security regulations, protecting the physical security of patient information and of information systems.
Help from AAFP. "We aren't just accepting the regulations as they've been promulgated," says Executive Vice President Douglas Henley, M.D. "In our comments on the proposed privacy regulations in March, we said they would make the compliance process cumbersome, costly and time-consuming. We'll keep working through regulatory and legislative channels for changes that will make the regulations more appropriate to the office environment, while still preserving the goal of protecting patient information."
The Academy will also make resources available to family physicians to ease the process of complying with HIPAA. "We're investigating options to give our members the education and the implementation tools they need," says Henley.
The AAFP may develop tools to help you identify the gaps between your current office operations and what will be required; checklists, sample forms and model contracts; and comprehensive compliance plans.
You can read up on HIPAA at http://www.aafp.org/fpm/20010300/43what.html, an article from the March Family Practice Management. An article on the HIPAA security standards is planned for the July/August FPM issue.
Another resource is on the Web site of the American Health Information Management Association. To view that information, go to http://library.ahima.org/bok/.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2001 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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