Welcome to the August 2009 HITECH/HIPAA Compliance Newsletter. The featured article this month is entitled: "The Intersection of HITECH/HIPAA and Meaningful Use: Part I." It is the first in a series of featured articles over the next few months that will discuss the transformational impact that the HITECH Act is likely to have on HIPAA's regulatory environment.
 
Compliance with HIPAA's Privacy and Security Rules are now part of HHS's "meaningful use" definition, which, as a practical matter, means that providers and facilities found to be non-HIPAA compliant may not get paid their electronic health record (EHR) incentives under HITECH. That, coupled with HITECH's enhanced HIPAA enforcement regime, is likely to transform HIPAA from a paper tiger to legislation that is actively enforced.

 

Since we first co-authored the HIPAA Survival Guide, HHS has provided key guidance regarding the definition of meaningful use under the HITECH Act. Compliance with HIPAA's Privacy and Security Rules is now an integral part of the meaningful use definition. It is also part of the 2011 meaningful use objectives. Providers and facilities must ensure adequate privacy and security protection for personal health information if they expect to receive HITECH EHR incentive payments.

HHS' HITECH meaningful use definition can be broken down into three principal components: 1) five policy priorities; 2) care goals; and 3) a set of objectives and measures for each two year window (2011, 2013, and 2015). Lost in much of the HITECH discussion to date are the transformational privacy implications of HITECH's Subtitle D-Privacy, which provides the central point of intersection between HITECH, HIPAA and meaningful use. Compliance with Subtitle D is therefore critical with respect to providers and facilities receiving ARRA's promised EHR incentives.

In short, in order to understand the non paper tiger HIPAA you must understand Subtitle D. The remainder of this article will highlight key sections of this Subtitle and provide an explanation as to why HITECH/HIPAA compliance is a "wicked problem."

 

 

We help companies safely and securely do business on the web in accordance with applicable law. How? By helping them reduce risk. Privacy and security compliance issues are merely a subset of legal issues that online businesses face. This is equally true for eCommerce sites as it is for healthcare providers, facilities, and vendors.

 

Sincerely,

 

Carlos Leyva
Managing Shareholder
The Digital Business Law Group, P.A.