As a self-described “rabble rouser” Brian Ahier plans to ask his doctor to send a medical record to a free e-mail account, if only to see what happens, after the omnibus HIPAA Final Rule on Privacy and Security kicks in.
“It’s obviously not the biggest thing in the omnibus rule but it’s there, relatively unknown,” Ahier, founder of Advanced Health Information Exchange Resources (AHIER) said. “And that makes it incredibly interesting.”
Ahier is not the only one to think that.
For a brief stretch Monday morning Twitter was ablaze with Tweets bearing the #NHITweek or #HealthITWeek hashtags and replete with surprise at OCR director Leon Rodriguez’s revelation about what was at the core of the most significant HIPAA violation to date.
The single largest HIPAA settlement was not about security or privacy, but access $4.3M #HealthITWeek
What’s more …
10:30am via Twitter for iPhone
New OCR #hipaa clarifications say u can get your electronic health info sent wherever YOU want #bluebutton
Indeed, when the omnibus rule kicks in on September 23, among the perhaps lesser-known changes will be that, if asked, providers must send a patient’s medical record to whatever email address said patient offers.
“The doctor is allowed to warn them of the risks, however, they’re not allowed to deny that request,” Ahier said. “So if a patient wants you to send it to their Hotmail, you have to send it to their Hotmail — and I don’t think a lot of healthcare organizations realize that.”
Ahier said he is expecting this to trip up many providers in the short-term, particularly problematic because OCR has indicated that it will aggressively enforce the patient access rights that are expanding under the HIPAA omnibus rule.
“Certainly if you go to the medical records division or the records release folks, the staff that are going to be dealing with these types of requests would respond by saying ‘No, I’m sorry we can’t do that. That’s not secure,’” Ahier explained. “There will be providers that won’t do that and it’s actually a violation of HIPAA law to deny the patient that right.”
For more on the new patient rights under HIPAA, OCR posted a three-minute video to YouTube that also explains some of the marketing and fundraising changes.
See also:
What scares health pros most about omnibus HIPAA
4 risk factors to understand about HIPAA final rule on privacy and security
