HHS advisory panel considers patient consent framework

An advisory group to the Health and Human Services Department has begun considering a draft Basic Patient Privacy Consent technical framework that describes how health organizations should incorporate patients' consents and consent policies into their enterprises.

The Health IT Policy Committee's privacy and security workgroup gave its members a draft patient consent framework. The draft was created with input from Integrating the Health Enterprise, an organization that promotes the coordinated use of technical standards. The patient consents are needed for collecting and sharing patient health care data in electronic health record (EHR) systems to improve quality of care and public health. In many cases, data is de-identified to avoid identifying the patient. HHS currently is distributing $17 billion in incentives under the economic stimulus law to doctors and hospitals that adopt the electronic systems. The goal of the basic patient privacy consent framework is to be human readable, machine readable and able to handle multiple types of consents and documents.