HIPAA Privacy Rule

See the following -

Give Us Our Damn Lab Results!!

Alice Leiter and Devon McGraw | The Health Care Blog | September 15, 2013

Two years ago, the Department of Health and Human Services released proposed regulations that would allow patients to obtain their clinical lab test results directly from the lab, rather than having to wait to receive the results from their health care provider.  CDT and other consumer groups enthusiastically supported this proposed rule at the time of its release. Read More »

New Study Shows Patients Prefer Immediate Access to Test Results and have Unmet Information Needs

A recent study of 8,000 patients that accessed their test results via an online patient portal found that more than 95% wanted to continue to immediately receive test results through their portal. That percentage stayed at 95% when focused on patients with non-normal results. These findings come amid concerns that the immediate release of test results could lead to patient distress when patients access test results before their physicians could contact them and help to interpret those results...since the ONC information blocking regulations became applicable to health care providers on April 5, 2021, a patient may be able to access test results in parallel to those results’ availability to the ordering clinician.

Read More »

ONC Releases Final Rule on Interoperability: How Might it Affect Public Health?

On March 9, 2020 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released its final rule on the 21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program. Referred to by some people as the "Information Blocking Rule," since this is the primary topic, the document actually covers a host of other issues related to interoperability driven primarily by requirements of the 21st Century Cures Act. In addition to the final rule itself you can read the ONC press release, a comparison between the proposed and final rules, and lots of other resources.

Read More »