Latest / CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered. / The Health Data Gap HIPAA Cannot Fill

Transcript

The Health Data Gap HIPAA Cannot Fill · CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.

• 0:06
  David: So, kind of the obvious thing, in a way, would be to say, "Let's, let's have the feds step in here and, you know, have rules overall." And there's a history of that because you had HIPAA, which was really before the electronic era- Absolutely … and then HITECH, the Affordable Care Act, and a lot of things that have been moving forward, including my friend, uh, Micky Tripathi, when he was head of, uh, ONC, you know, did a lot to try to have actual interoperability, which is for better patient care and also should lower costs, uh, overall.
• 0:35
  David: But if we look at where that stands, so I think there was a federal HIPAA reproductive health privacy rule- Mm-hmm … that was vacated last year.
• 0:43
  David: And so is it actually realistic to try to push for kind of a, a national approach, or do we just need to figure out how to deal with this patchwork for the foreseeable future?
• 0:53
  Leigh: Yeah, I think, uh, specific to, uh, the type of sensitive health data that we're talking about, there … it's not gonna be addressed at the federal level.
• 1:02
  Leigh: Um, you know, it's just too politically fraught, and there's no agreement, uh, between the, the parties.
• 1:09
  Leigh: Obviously they're coming at this, you know, topic from a very different perspective, and so I don't think that w- will happen.
• 1:15
  Leigh: There are other places that we are hoping for, uh, federal action specific to health IT.
• 1:21
  Leigh: Um, you know, general privacy, um, and security, we could use a stronger national framework there than we have.
• 1:31
  Leigh: Uh, you know, legislation, you mentioned HIPAA.
• 1:33
  Leigh: HIPAA, of course, doesn't address, you know, kind of the appification of healthcare, right?
• 1:38
  Leigh: And, and the fact that so much data leaves HIPAA-covered, um, environments and goes out, and patients, you know, again, don't know what that looks like and they don't understand their exposure.
• 1:49
  Leigh: So, you know, Dr. Cassidy, Senator Cassidy had introduced some legislation there.
• 1:53
  Leigh: Um, I'm not sure that's gonna move.
• 1:56
  Leigh: But there are some efforts at the federal level to address things.
• 1:59
  Leigh: But on that reproductive health or gender-affirming care, I would not put a dollar on that bet.