How important is your protected health information (PHI)? Seems to me VERY important based on the interest of technology companies in the media as of late about the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed rule update. The recent media buzz focuses around the rules issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology for furthering interoperability. The purpose is primarily to help medical information be passed more easily between health systems, physicians, and patients. The goal of the proposed regulations is to make health data more accessible to all, allowing more flexibility for patient consumerism.
The conversation around interoperability between health organizations possessing patient data has been heavily discussed in the past decade. Advocacy from both sides has been agreeable to patients having the
ability to access their PHI and minimizing companies from withholding access to their data. Though the debate festers on about how secure the data will be with new proposal by HHS based on how the data is transferred and who has access to it.
With the value of the healthcare industry in the trillions, major technology companies want a piece of your data. So major technology companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, AWS, and others are listening closely and quietly to the debate, only demonstrating support in the need for interoperability. On the other hand, electronic medical record provider Epic has sent a letter with client signatures voicing their disapproval, citing privacy concerns. The expectation is for the ruling to be released in February.
Epic’s Judy Faulkner’s disagreement focuses on a need for increased requirements necessary to protect patient’s privacy. The use of application programming interfaces (APIs) will result in app makers having
access to the data without consent. Faulkner’s email was signed by 60 of Epic’s clients opposing the rule due to these privacy concerns.
At Extract we help healthcare institutions automatically retrieve patient data from electronic image files for tracking and trending. The data from these files can be used by the institution to provide a holistic view of the patient’s medical record for clinicians to make informed clinical decisions and research the best approach for the patient’s health care needs. Billions of pages have been processed, extracted, classified, indexed, and routed with ZERO privacy breaches.
Find us on the Epic App Orchard:
To learn more please reach out today.
Sources:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/10/big-tech-hhs-data-rules-097356
About the Author: Shane Dickson
Shane is the Regional Business Development Manager at Extract with more than 13 years of experience in the healthcare marketplace. His healthcare background includes managed care, regulatory guidelines, quality analytics, and EMR software solutions in a number of modalities. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from St. Norbert College while playing DIII collegiate hockey. Shane takes pride in listening to customers workflow issues to provide sound software solutions long-term.