Federal panel focuses on patient privacy and safety

While the Healthcare IT Policy Committee, a federal advisory panel, is working on projects that will outline patient protections, patient privacy activists warn that allowing patients to opt out of participation in electronic health information exchanges will be critical to building public trust.

At an April 21 meeting of the HIT Policy Committee, workgroup leaders proposed ways to build a foundation of trust. Deven McGraw, chair of the Privacy and Security Policy Workgroup and director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said, "privacy is critical to building trust." McGraw presented a draft on electronic health record protections her workgroup is developing using principles from existing laws. "We're not working from scratch here. We have laws in place," she said, citing HIPAA and state patient privacy laws. The workgroup is also drawing from the December 2008 Nationwide Privacy and Security Framework developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), McGraw said.