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HHS advisory committee calls for stronger health data privacy

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, January 14, 2008

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The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) recently released a report, "Enhanced Protections for Uses of Health Data: A Stewardship Framework for 'Secondary Uses' of Electronically Collected and Transmitted Health Data," which made more than 20 specific recommendations for increasing the privacy of EHRs, according to a January 7 article in The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) recently released a report, "Enhanced Protections for Uses of Health Data: A Stewardship Framework for 'Secondary Uses' of Electronically Collected and Transmitted Health Data," which made more than 20 specific recommendations for increasing the privacy of EHRs, according to a January 7 article in Government Health IT. In the report, NCVHS calls for "a transformation, in which the focus is on appropriate data stewardship for all uses of health data by all users, independent of whether an organization is covered under HIPAA."

The committee also found that HIPAA is effective when health data is used for patient care, but that "the more removed the user is from the patient, the less assurance there is that the data will be protected," says the article. "[The report] raised concerns about the sale of health data, the adequacy of de-identification techniques, the numerous state and federal laws covering health information privacy, and the difficulty of distinguishing between research using health data and quality improvement programs using the same data," according to the article.

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To read the report, click here.

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