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The State of Healthcare Privacy in the U.S.
This FairWarning customer webinar was completed on January 27th, 2010.
Title: The State of Healthcare Privacy in the U.S., Survey Results and Expert Perspectives
Date Conducted: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Speakers
Deven McGraw is the Director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Ms. McGraw was one of three persons appointed by Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), to serve on the Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy Committee, a federal advisory committee established in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Click here to view Deven's full biography or visit www.cdt.org.
John Houston is the Vice President, Information Security and Privacy; Assistant Counsel at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Mr. Houston has spoken about the HIPAA security and privacy rules in a wide variety of forums, including testifying twice before the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee and once before the US Senate Judiciary Committee. He was recently named to the newly formed Privacy and Security Workgroup of the HIT Policy Committee. Click here to view John's full biography or visit www.upmc.com.
Deven and John are both members of the Privacy and Security Workgroup of the Health IT Policy Committee, a federal advisory committee established in ARRA HITECH of 2009. Both Deven and John testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Health IT Privacy prior to the passage of ARRA HITECH.
Overview
Results from a recent industry survey on the state of U.S. healthcare privacy were released during the webinar, and expert speakers offered their perspectives on the survey results.
Ms. McGraw's focus was on comparing the survey results with existing healthcare policy such as ARRA HITECH as well as providing insights on how the results map to anticipated policies in 2010.
Mr. Houston offered insights on operationalizing healthcare privacy and compliance leveraging his best-of-class experiences at UPMC as well as drawing upon his privacy work with HHS and the HIT Policy committee.
Survey Background
In November 2009, FairWarning, a leading provider of privacy breach detection solutions for Electronic Health Records, commissioned New London Consulting to develop a survey of healthcare providers, specifically hospital personnel. The survey was designed to elicit healthcare professionals’ opinions and insights on new healthcare privacy regulations such as ARRA HITECH, privacy security and auditing, information technology risk management, and compliance requirements.
New London Consulting and FairWarning developed a series of 26 questions that sought to reveal the following:
- Awareness and understanding of new privacy laws and concerns surrounding willful neglect and breach notification
- Perceived impact of ARRA HITECH "Accounting of Disclosure" requirements
- Adoption rate of automated systems and processes that will meet compliance requirements
- Perceptions surrounding government enforcement of the new laws and likelihood of an audit
- Deployment and effective use of privacy and auditing tools for compliance
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