On Wednesday, the Medical Group Management Association sent a letter to HHS’ Office for Civil Rights asserting that the new disclosure requirements under the HITECH Act would be “extremely difficult to achieve without an enormous outlay of resources,” Health Data Management reports
MGMA sent the letter in response to a recent request for information from OCR, which is developing a rule to address the disclosure of protected medical information under the HITECH Act (Goedert, Health Data Management, 5/19).
The HITECH Act, part of the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, strengthens the HIPAA privacy rule. The act requires all health care providers, payers and their business associates to account for the disclosure of protected patient data included in an electronic health record, even if the information is disclosed for health care treatment or billing purposes (Cadet, CMIO, 5/19).
MGMA Survey
In the letter, MGMA cited a recent survey it conducted among its member medical groups that use EHR systems.
Out of the 369 medical groups that participated, the survey found that:
In addition, 55% of the survey respondents said meeting the new HIPAA requirements would be “extremely burdensome” on their practices.
MGMA Concerns
MGMA wrote that providing an account of all health information disclosures would require “a substantial amount of manual collection from multiple data sources.”
William Jessee, MGMA president and CEO, said the requirement “may be such a significant impediment for physician practices” that it could hinder EHR adoption (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 5/20).
MGMA urged OCR to consider revising the disclosure requirements and said it would continue working with the office to ensure patient privacy while promoting EHR adoption (CMIO, 5/19).
Source: iHealthBeat
Comments are closed.
Copyright 2015 - Pulse Practice Solutions | 615.425.2719