State Bills & HIPAA

I believe that the state bills are trying to circumvent the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 which provides Privacy and Security Rules. The information I got off the HSS website states that HIPAA provides federal protections for personal health information held by covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information. The Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of personal health information needed for patient care and other important purposes; it gives individuals rights over their protected health information and sets rules and limits on who can look at and receive that health information. The Security Rule specifies a series of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for covered entities to use to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information. The Security Rule protects health information in electronic form by requiring entities covered by HIPAA to use physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to ensure that electronic protected health information remains private and secure. The HHS Office for Civil Rights enforces the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.

The regulation implementing the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA) became effective on January 19, 2009 (42 C.F.R. Part 3). PSQIA establishes a voluntary reporting system to enhance the data available to assess and resolve patient safety and health care quality issues. To encourage the reporting and analysis of medical errors, PSQIA provides Federal privilege and confidentiality protections for patient safety information called patient safety work product. Patient safety work product includes information collected and created during the reporting and analysis of patient safety events. The confidentiality provisions are said to improve patient safety outcomes by creating an environment where providers may report and examine patient safety events without fear of increased liability risk. Greater reporting and analysis of patient safety events will yield increased data and better understanding of patient safety events. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) works in close collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) which has responsibility for listing patient safety organizations (PSOs), the external experts established by the Patient Safety Act to collect and analyze patient safety information.

On March 13, 2012 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a news bulletin saying that HHS settled a HIPPA case with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Tennessee for $1.5 million. . . The enforcement action is the first resulting from a breach report required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act Breach Notification Rule (57 unencrypted computer hard drives were stolen containing the protected health information of over 1 million individuals). “This settlement sends an important message that OCR expects health plans and health care providers to have in place a carefully designed, delivered, and monitored HIPAA compliance program,” said OCR Director Leon Rodriguez. “The HITECH Breach Notification Rule is an important enforcement tool and OCR will continue to vigorously protect patients’ right to private and secure health information.”

Individuals who believe that a covered entity has violated their (or someone else’s) health information privacy rights or committed another violation of the HIPAA Privacy or Security Rule may file a complaint with OCR at: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints/index.html.

Now, let’s not forget that on or about: February 8, 2012 a Texas (TX) federal judge upheld a law that requires abortion providers to show or describe to women the ultrasound of the fetus and have them hear the heartbeat before allowing an abortion; February 16 there were a couple of bills pending in Virginia (VA); one followed the TX law and the other required that if a heartbeat is not heard a trans-vaginal ultrasound is required (because of a February 21 demonstration by 100s of women at the VA capitol in protest of the legislation, on February 23 VA dropped the portion requiring the invasive vaginal ultrasound) and February 16 the Oklahoma Senate passed Senate Bill 1433 (Personhood Act) with a 34-8 vote to define life at conception and extend the same rights to the “unborn” child as a born child and on March 27 it gained approval from a state House committee; in looking up this bill I found an Alternet and Oklahomahateswomen website that show they have a recent history of bills that are unfavorable toward women.   

Lesko’s Arizona bill and the others followed protests by religious groups, including church-owned universities and hospitals, over President Obama’s federal mandate for health insurance coverage for contraceptives. I have to assume that the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the HHS or someone else will continue the fight against these type bills but I sure wish the Supreme Court and the US Department of Health and Human Services would step up and end this abuse of women’s rights.