New York Times: HIPAA confusion remains for healthcare staff
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, July 9, 2007
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Much to the dismay of patients, their families, and friends, HIPAA continues to be a source of confusion for many healthcare providers and staff. According to the New York Times, government studies continue to show that frustration with HIPAA is widespread-an unintended consequence of the 1996 law. The problem may be the somewhat vague language of the HIPAA law, which allows healthcare providers to release NPI, barring objection from the patient, though it does not insist that they do so, says the Times.
According to Mark Rothstein, chairman of a privacy subcommittee that advises the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which administers HIPAA, healthcare providers approach HIPPA "in a defensive, somewhat arbitrary and unreasonable way". And Susan McAndrew, deputy director of health information privacy at HHS, says that providers use HIPPA as an excuse, often blaming HIPAA as the reason they can not, or choose not, to make a NPI disclosure. The current trend of overzealous HIPAA application seems particularly uncalled for, considering that no healthcare provider has actually been penalized for violating the law in the last four years, according to the Times.
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