I can’t believe that it’s been almost a month and a half since my last post. I think that’s definitely a record for EMR and HIPAA. What can I say? My EMR presentation in Hawaii led into Thanksgiving which led into the Christmas holidays and just today I got back from a 2 week vacation in Utah. My family and I had a great time and I hope that you all had a great Christmas season also.
Now that I’m back home, I’ll hopefully have enough time to post more about EMR and HIPAA. I have at least one special post in mind, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get to a bunch of other things also.
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The purpose of HIPAA was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system through the development of established health data standards and requirements for the transmission and storage of electronic health information. Currently, however, most EMR companies dont comply with these standards. We need to national licencing mechanism to ensure that companies are indeed HIPAA compliant, similar to how manufacturers get ISO-9001 certified. Otherwise, the act just turns into a marketing tag line for companies.
You make a very interesting point. However, I personally don’t believe that it’s just been a marketing tag line. Every EMR company I know has thought about and considered what it means to be HIPAA compliant. The reality is that each one has interpreted it differently. Therefore, how can you have a certification when the policies aren’t and can’t be defined very well.
I would also argue that the threat of HIPAA has done a lot of good towards EMR companies and maybe more important, clinical offices doing more to protect the privacy of their patients. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they couldn’t do more. They can and should and most will.
I think that you are both right. EMR vendors appear to take HIPAA seriously, but the act does not require serious work on thier part. In the end it is someone of a tag line because we have to ask what vendors and software solutions must do to be compliant. The measures that must be implemented have to mature; then HIPAA will be more of a force for privacy.