Journal of AHIMA - February 2019

Bulletin Board what’s happening in healthcare
HHS Seeks Feedback on HIPAA Modifications

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is collecting input from healthcare stakeholders on how HIPAA—and the HIPAA Privacy Rule in particular—could be modified to improve information sharing and coordinated care. In December, OCR issued a Request for Information (RFI) on “Modifying HIPAA Rules to Improve Coordinated Care,” and will continue collecting public feedback through February 11, 2019.

“We are looking for candid feedback
about how the existing HIPAA regula-
tions are working in the real world and
how we can improve them,” said OCR
Director Roger Severino in a press re-
lease. “We are committed to pursuing
the changes needed to improve quality
of care and eliminate undue burdens
on covered entities while maintaining
robust privacy and security protections
for individuals’ health information.”
In recent years, OCR has heard calls
to revisit aspects of HIPAA that may
limit or discourage information shar-
ing needed for coordinated care or to
facilitate the transformation to value-
based healthcare, OCR said. The RFI
asks the public and healthcare pro-
fessionals to provide information on
any HIPAA Rule provisions that “may
present obstacles to these goals
without meaningfully contributing to
the privacy and security of protected
health information (PHI) or patients’
ability to exercise their PHI rights.”
The RFI seeks comment on:

Encouraging information-sharing for treatment and care coordination

Facilitating parental involvement in care

Addressing the opioid crisis and serious mental illness

Accounting for disclosures of

VA Partnering with Large Tech, Retail
Companies to Expand Care Access

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has begun working with several prominent technology, retail, and telecommunications companies in an effort to expand veterans’ access to health records and telehealth, according to official announcements and media reports.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that tech giant Apple is in talks with the VA to provide veterans access to electronic health records via their iPhones. The move is the latest effort by Apple to break into the healthcare industry and use its operating system to store and share health data. According to emails seen by the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks to migrate the health records of nine million US veterans to dedicated iOS software—a move it says will improve care through better access to health information and speed up treatment delivery times.

The VA also recently announced it
will partner with Walmart, T-Mobile,
and Philips to offer veterans im-
proved access to telehealth through
an expanded version of their “Any-
where to Anywhere VA Health Care”
program, first unveiled in 2017. The
VA is already one of the largest con-
nected care networks in the coun-
try, logging an estimated 900,000
telemedicine encounters in 2017,
according to an article in mHealth
Intelligence. The program’s expan-
sion is being done to better reach
veterans in rural and remote areas
of the country.

The VA will use Philips telemedicine technology to create service centers at 10 Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts across the country. Walmart will create similar telehealth stations at some of its stores, and T-Mobile has agreed to host the VA’s telehealth app for free on digital health devices used by veterans, according to mHealth Intelligence. ¢

Congress Issues
Cyber Strategy

After years of investigation, analysis, and
hearings, the House of Representatives’
Energy and Commerce Committee’s
Subcommittee on Oversight and Inves-
tigations issued a Cybersecurity Strat-
egy Report to address cyberattacks on
government and private sector systems.
The report named strategic priorities
such as: implementing a software bill of
materials across connected technologies;
strengthening public-private partner-
ships; stabilizing open source software
ecosystems; and widespread adoption
of coordinated disclosure programs.
“Traditional information technology
strategies seem largely ineffective at
stemming the growing tide of cyberse-
curity incidents—which now range from
ransomware attacks that can hold an en-
tire company hostage to hackers’ exploi-
tation of a security vulnerability in the lat-
est cellphone model,” the report stated.