Health Information Management

Tip: Consider using the Web to assist with HIPAA compliance efforts and improve patient care

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, December 20, 2002

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Allowing patients to view their medical records and communicate with physicians online will not only give you a competitive edge, it will also make HIPAA compliance easier and improve the quality of your patients' care.

The Internet offers an easy delivery mechanism for a lot of the documentation required under HIPAA. You can help fulfill a lot of the privacy rule requirements, such as posting your facility's notice of privacy practices, through the Web, says Evan Crawford, executive director of the Center for e-transformation/ e-medicine for Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). "HIPAA and the Web go well together."

CHOP, the largest children's hospital and second largest pediatric research facility in the country, conducts training for its 6,000 employees on the Web and plans to do the same for HIPAA education. Like a lot of facilities, the hospital also intends to make personal health records available online.

"Patients will use a password, and we may go a level beyond that, having them use a digital token that we would pay for," says Crawford. The hospital plans to use this Web-enabled technology to help meet the privacy rule requirements for allowing patients to gain access to their records and request amendments.

The privacy and security officers should look closely at the security rule's firewall and encryption requirements when establishing any Web-based program, says Crawford.

Go to http://www.himinfo.com/news/tip/ to read more.



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