Stakeholders Release Recommendations for Privacy and Secure Access to Health Information

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 15, 2023

Media Contact: Melissa Quick, mquick@sironastrategies.com

Stakeholders Release Recommendations for Privacy and Secure Access to Health Information

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, 14 leading associations and non-profits representing patients and consumers, clinicians, hospitals, health insurers, and technology companies released a series of recommendations to advance data privacy and ensure patient access to health information while maintaining consumer trust in health care.

Today’s white paper builds on the December 2022 Health IT Leadership Roundtable event, Maintaining Consumer Trust in Health Care Through Data Privacy and Secure Patient Access to Health Information, which was facilitated by Sirona Strategies, a health care consultancy. The Roundtable featured leading executives and experts in a discussion of the overall importance of maintaining consumers’ trust, opportunities and challenges created by existing health data privacy regulatory frameworks, and federal actions to address the perceived gaps in data privacy.

Key recommendations include greater transparency of how consumer data is being shared and stored; baseline rules that limit how health data is collected, shared, sold and used given the complexity of existing privacy policies; and clear responsibilities for enforcing health data privacy for the federal government both within and outside of HIPAA.

“Every American deserves peace of mind that their personal health information is safe and secure. Consumer trust and strong privacy protections are the essential foundation of data sharing that we’re committed to strengthening, particularly better alignment between privacy laws and the HIPAA-level protections that consumers rely on,” said David Merritt, senior vice president of policy and advocacy for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. “Together, with other health and technology leaders, we urge Congress and the administration to take action that strengthens the security, confidentiality and privacy of personal health information.”

“Health data privacy standards today are not consumer-friendly or fundamentally privacy protective, reducing trust,” said Andy Crawford, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It is important for policymakers to enact a baseline set of protections for consumers across all of their information.”

The Health IT Leadership Roundtable event was hosted by: American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Physicians, American Health Information Management Association, American Heart Association, American Hospital Association, American Medical Group Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Center for Democracy and Technology, College of Healthcare Information and Management Executives, Consumer Technology Association, Federation of American Hospitals, Medical Group Management Association, National Partnership for Women & Families, Premier Healthcare Alliance.

More information about the white paper and the event can be found here.