The Health IT Policy Committee has approved recommendations from its privacy and security "Tiger Team" outlining when health care providers must obtain patient consent before electronically transmitting health information, Government Health IT reports.
The committee will submit the recommendations to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, which will decide whether to adopt the proposed guidelines for its "meaningful use" incentive program.
Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHRs will qualify for incentive payments through Medicaid and Medicare. To meet the first stage of meaningful use requirements in 2011, health care providers must be capable of participating in direct point-to-point health data exchanges.
Recommendations
According to the recommendations approved by the Policy Committee, directly exchanging patient information between two health care providers would not necessitate patient consent beyond the requirements of the HIPAA privacy and security rules, fair information practices and state laws.
However, the recommendations state that patient consent might be necessary before a health care provider surrenders control of a patient's health information by sending it through a health data exchange network to a different physician practice or clinical laboratory (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 8/20).
Debate Over Offering Alternatives
The Policy Committee hit a stumbling block on a recommendation that would require health care providers to offer alternative data exchange models to patients who choose to opt out of a multi-point health data exchange network.
Neal Calman -- president and CEO of the Institute for Family Health and former Tiger Team member -- raised an objection to the recommendation because he said it would place an unnecessary burden on health care providers.
He said physicians should explain their data sharing policies to patients and allow the patients to decide whether to continue seeking services from the physician practice (Guerra, InformationWeek, 8/20).
Paul Egerman, co-chair of the Tiger Team, countered that the burden will not fall on health care providers to find an alternative way of sharing information. Egerman said health data exchanges should be capable of separating their processes and transmitting information without storing it (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 8/20).
Final Vote
Despite concerns over patient consent specifics, the full Health IT Policy Committee voted to accept the Tiger Team's recommendations (InformationWeek, 8/20).