Bulletin Board what’s happening in healthcare
NwHIN to Transition into Independent Entity
The Nationwide Health Information
Network will leave its government cradle and transition into a free-standing
public-private partnership by October.
Named NwHIN Exchange, the new
nonprofit organization will offer the
NwHIN health information exchange
platform to private healthcare systems
and government users, according to
an article in Government Health IT.
NwHIN Exchange would use the
NwHIN Connect software to enable
exchange within and between healthcare entities. NwHIN Connect is a set
of standards, services, and policies
that enable information to be securely
exchanged over the Internet.
After the years spent pilot testing
were deemed successful, the Office
of the National Coordinator for Health
IT’s Exchange Coordinating Com-
mittee decided NwHIN was ready for
mass use. The committee approved a
plan March 1 that charted the NwHIN
Exchange’s strategy, sustainability
model, and operational transition to a
nonprofit organization.
“What we realized is that six months
ago 500 hospitals were already con-
nected, 30,000 clinical users, 3,000
providers, and a patient population
coverage area of 65 million people
and 1 million shared records. It be-
came pretty clear this wasn’t a pilot
anymore,” said Mariann Yeager, in-
terim executive director of the NwHIN
Exchange, in the article.
HHS Settles HIPAA Investigation for $1.5
Million
In March, the Department of Health
and Human Services recorded its first
enforcement action resulting from the
2009 breach notification rule, reaching a $1.5 million settlement with
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee
(BCBST).
The investigation followed a report
from BCBST that 57 computer hard
drives were stolen from a locked data
network closet in a leased office facility. The drives contained the unencrypted protected health information
of more than one million individuals,
including names, Social Security
numbers, diagnosis codes, dates of
birth, and health plan identification
numbers.
BCBST had relocated staff from
the leased facility but had not yet
moved the computer equipment in
the network closet. An investigation
by HHS’s Office for Civil Rights de-
termined that BCBST failed to imple-
ment appropriate administrative safe-
guards by not performing a security
evaluation in response to the opera-
tional changes. The investigation also
showed a failure to implement appro-
priate physical safeguards, accord-
ing to the resolution agreement. Both
safeguards are required by the HIPAA
security rule.
ACO Role Continues
to Grow and Evolve
Leavitt Partners has initiated a national
study to identify and track accountable
care organizations, noting that both the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act and the Medicare Shared Savings
Program have generated a growing interest in the accountable care model.
Key findings include:
x Dispersion varies significantly
by market, with multiple ACOs in
some areas and none in others
x While hospitals are the most com-
mon backers of ACOs, the over-
all variety of backers has created
multiple models for providing care
x ACO growth has developed inde-
pendent of Medicare, despite re-
lease of the Medicare Shared Sav-
ings Program final regulations
x It remains unclear which models
of providing accountable care will
prove most successful for achiev-
ing an ACO’s goals
For more information, visit http://
leavittpartnersblog.com. ¢
