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August 21, 2009
Filed Under (EHR, Electronic Health Records) by admin
Health care providers and health IT vendors should consider legal issues as they begin to transition to electronic health record systems, experts said at the American Health Information Management Association’s third annual Legal EHR Summit, Modern Healthcare reports.
Health Record Ownership
EHR technologies have started to alter discussions on health record ownership, experts said.
In the past, health care providers generally had exclusive ownership of a patient’s paper medical record. However, state and federal regulations are beginning to grant patients greater rights to access and modify their health records.
George Schroeder, director of risk management and medical network services at Cedars-Sinai Health System, said legal constructs for EHR ownership are similar to a trustee model. He explained that health care providers can function as trustees because they act on behalf of themselves and their patients. He said, “You have to have a balance between competing rights and competing responsibilities.”
Legally Defensible EHRs
Experts at the conference also noted that most EHR systems on the market cannot produce a legally defensible health record because they do not track when people access and modify the records.
Linda Kloss, AHIMA CEO, said many vendors have not focused on developing legally defensible EHR systems. In addition, health care providers have not created a demand for such functionality.
Kloss said the annual summit aims to counter vendor inattention to the importance of legal EHRs. She added that AHIMA will pressure policymakers to include auditing requirements in certification criteria for EHRs (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 8/18).
HIPAA Enforcement
Kirk Nahra, an attorney in Washington, D.C., said the federal economic stimulus package imposes stricter enforcement guidelines for the HIPAA privacy and security rules.
Nahra said the stimulus package sets penalties of $25,000 to $1.5 million for violations of patient data restrictions. The stimulus package also grants state attorneys general the authority to enforce HIPAA rules.
Nahra noted that the stimulus law also requires software vendors and other health care business partners to alert consumers about security breaches. He said he expects health care providers to revise vendor contracts to reflect the new provisions (Anderson, Health Data Management, 8/18).
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