So, the Massachusetts legislature wrapped up the FY07-FY08 session early Friday morning. The wonky-hot legislative item that AAC was watching was the Senate President’s Healthcare Cost Containment bill, S2863 – followed by the press primarily for its attempts at restricting gifts from pharma. Check out HCFA’s blog to get a blow-by-blow on the fight put up on the issue of limiting gifts from pharma and the historic same sex equity bills enacted.
The component of this legislation that stoked AAC’s fire is the establishment of a program for the statewide adoption of electronic health records by 2015. A statewide interoperable electronic health records (EHR) system has potential to enhance quality, increase patient engagement, reduce duplication of tests, and contain costs. Those benefits can only be reached if consumers and providers both trust the system.
Privacy and data security issues surrounding electronic health records generally largely fall into two categories: (1) concerns about breaches or unauthorized disclosures of information and (2) concerns about the systemic flow of information throughout the system, like sharing identifiable health information with entities that are part of the system.
So let’s look at these. Think that breaches don’t happen? Breach Blog verifies that there have been 12 reported breach or disclosure problems within the healthcare industry alone in the last 6 months. Check out Fierce Health IT too for their running list of security breaches. (Read on …)
In the online editon of The New York Times, their “Patient Voices” series continues with a look at eight men and women who share their experiences living with AIDS. 
