Electronic Health Information Privacy - Office of Civil Rights

I received the following announcement today, which may be of interest to some readers:


"New OCR Guidance on the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the Electronic Exchange of Health Information


"The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has published new HIPAA Privacy Rule guidance as part of the Department’s Privacy and Security Toolkit to implement The Nationwide Privacy and Security Framework for Electronic Exchange of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy and Security Framework). The Privacy and Security Framework and Toolkit is designed to establish privacy and security principles for health care stakeholders engaged in the electronic exchange of health information and includes tangible tools to facilitate implementation of these principles. The new HIPAA Privacy Rule guidance in the Toolkit discusses how the Privacy Rule supports and can facilitate electronic health information exchange in a networked environment. In addition, the guidance includes documents that address electronic access by an individual to his or her protected health information and how the Privacy Rule may apply to and supports the use of Personal Health Records.


"These new HIPAA guidance documents are available on the OCR Privacy Rule Web Site at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/hit/. For more information on the Privacy and Security Framework and to view other documents in the Privacy and Security Toolkit, visit http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/privacy/framework.html."