By DAVID HARLOW

The federales announced a new set of HIPAA regulations today (to be published in the Federal Register on July 14) in a press conference featuring Kathleen Sebelius (HHS Secretary), Georgina Verdugo (HHS OCR Director) and David Blumenthal (ONC Director).  The HIPAA changes are essentially mandated by the HITECH Act.  From the HHS presser:

The proposed rule announced today would strengthen and expand enforcement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy, Security, and Enforcement Rules by:

• expanding individuals’ rights to access their information and to restrict certain types of disclosures of protected health information to health plans;
• requiring business associates of HIPAA-covered entities to be under most of the same rules as the covered entities;
• setting new limitations on the use and disclosure of protected health information for marketing and fundraising; and
• prohibiting the sale of protected health information without patient authorization.

Two new websites were announced as well.  One is a beefed-up version of the HIPAA data breach notification wall of shame, and the other is a new HHS privacy website directed at the general public, now up at hhs.gov/healthprivacy.

This website, a joint statement from ONC and OCR posted today, and the tenor of the federales’ remarks today indicate a deep concern about public perceptions concerning privacy and security of protected health information — sort of a “what if we throw a party and nobody comes?” vibe.Continue reading…

By DAVE DURENBERGER

Former Republican Senator Dave Durenberger was always the sensible Republican on health care. He now hangs out in a small institute called the National Institute of Health Policy at a small Minnesota college called the University of St. Thomas. Every so often he puts out great commentary emails. His most recent one contains a really a great description of what happened to health insurance in the late 1990s. You can sign up here. Well worth a read and I’ve reprinted the part about insurance below—Matthew Holt

I’ve watched the ups and downs of health insurance products and “markets” since involving myself as an employer in the 70s in a community-wide effort by large employers to provide employees with a choice of health insurance plans, including the nascent HMO. Our goal was reducing health care costs through informed employees and accountable health plans, creating, in effect, new forms of insurance and competitive markets for insurance and medical services at the community level by using available information and consumer choices to facilitate behavior change.

While experiments like this across the country have been tried with varying success, we are now on the verge of doing a “back to the future” adaptation of our lessons learned. The health reform law (ACA) provides for state-based health insurance regulation, health insurance exchanges and a new emphasis in assisting “smart buys” by employees. Recall what happened to the HMO: It became large national “managed care organizations” like UnitedHealth Care (UHC) who lost community support for their behavior change because savings never stayed with those who earned them.

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By MICHAEL LAKE

This is a summary of the HIT Trends Report for June 2010. You can get the current issue here.

E-prescribing. Not much to report here other than some feedback to the DEA around its long-awaited proposed rule to allow e-prescribing of controlled substances. Other than the Surescripts rightful defense of its history as an industry certifier, these are largely requests for clarification and cautions from the  pharmacy industry that smaller pharmacies may have some difficulties.

EHR. The big news this month is the Allscripts and Eclipsys combination. An integrated hospital and physician practice product will be increasingly important as hospitals reach out to affiliated practices with EMR solutions and plans to build clinically-integrated accountable care organizations. Also of note was the announcement by Dell and Practice Fusion to package up its software-as-a-service (SaaS) EMR for smaller practices. EMR suppliers are firming up their supply chains to make purchases as simple as possible. Dell has similar relationships with other companies including eClinicalWorks, Allscripts and others.  

GE Healthcare also followed up on its recent acquisition of MedPlexus, a SaaS EMR, with the launch of its Centricity Advance product for smaller practices. According to Health Data Management it’s being priced at $4K-$9K start up and $300-$800 per month. The launch event included a demo by a solo doc using the software and commentary by Newt Gingrich, Peter Basch, MD and others.

HITECH. HITECH this month focused on safety-net providers with grants to boost IT use and funds to figure out how they participate in reimbursement incentives. One project is part of a $2B HRSA grant under ARRA to expand health services to low-income and uninsured. Each recipient was awarded between $500,000 and $3M for new and enhanced EHR implementations and other uses. The other is a small grant to encourage participation of safety net providers in government programs. It’s a reminder that health IT in poorer communities is particularly challenging. Also out this month is a comprehensive policy view of HITECH by Manatt from an impressive cross-section of industry leadership.  Study was supported by CHCF, Colorado Health Foundation and UHF.

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By Matthew Holt

I'm trying to get better about putting my KOMO radio spots up here, if only because trying to be coherent about a topic in a couple or 45 second soundbites is pretty hard and therefore good practice. Today I'm talking about the new website launched last week by HHS called Healthcare.gov

Here's my two minute explanation (aimed at a the typical AM radio listener in Seattle).

Matthew talks about Healthcare.gov

One of the best analysis I've seen about Healthcare.gov is over on the O'Reilly Radar written by Andy Oram. You should check it out directly.  Andy's coverage of healthcare.gov is part of a bigger interest in healthcare generally from the O'Reilly & Web 2.0 communities, which we of course welcome! (They are partners in the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge)

One place where there's room for lots more activity is in Open Source in health care. Andy has been working hard on getting healthcare into the upcoming OSCON Conference in Portland, OR July 19-23. Here's the Health Care OSCON track. And here's Andy's preview of what will be in the track.

Andy wrote to me with some additional information about the Birds of a Feather meetup:

I want to encourage any interested person nearly Portland, OR to come in for Birds-of-a-Feather sessions even if they can't afford to attend the conference. BOFs are officially for session attendees,but no one ever checks badges and I organized the BOFs in the hope of drawing in more local people: 

The BOF session on Healthcare is Thursday July 21 at 7pm

Finally, three podcast interviews with health care speakers who'll be at OSCON:

• Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache web server project and the CollabNet cooperative software development company, now with HHS on the CONNECT software project
• Arien Malec, coordinator of NHIN Direct at ONC (and former RelayHealth-er)
• Fred Trotter, open source advocate in health care and organizer of the (separate) OSHealthcon summit.

So if you're interested in open source and health care, you should make your way to Portland for OSCON.