Health information privacy provisions included in the federal stimulus package amount to a "massive" expansion of HIPAA, said a Milwaukee lawyer participating in a conference discussion about its legal and financial implications.  Mark Garsombke, a shareholder in Milwaukee-based Whyte Hirschboeck and chairman of the firm's HIPAA practice group, said the new health privacy provisions, included in the HITECH Act embedded within the stimulus bill, apply HIPAA regulations beyond health care providers to the outside accountants, lawyers and others professional they engage.

There is also a requirement included in the legislative, Mr. Garsombke said, that would require health care professionals and their business associates to notify a patient if his or her health record becomes "unsecured."  It also contains what Mr. Garsombke called "shaming provisions" that require providers to notify the media and their state health department if more than 500 health records are breached.

Mr. Garsombke said that business associates, as outside service providers are called under HIPAA, now must act like the health care providers or plans they work for in terms of HIPAA.  Health care providers and plans may like these provisions because they will force business associates to be more careful, Mr. Garsombke said.  But it also may create a burden for them because they may have to redo the agreements they have with their outside consultants regarding the personal health information to which their work exposes them.

GE announced that it will spend $3 billion over the next six years on healthcare innovation that will help deliver better care to more people at lower cost. In addition, the company will commit $2 billion of financing and $1 billion in related GE technology and content to drive healthcare information technology and health in rural and underserved areas. These investments are the foundation of GE's healthymagination initiative, which is built on the global commitments of reducing costs, improving quality and expanding access for millions of people.

The conference has begun with a terrific challenge from Peter Strombom, a conference co-chairman.  Peter's thesis is that no one knows all of what is available today in health care IT, nor does anyone know what will be available to us in the future.  These are questions the co-chairman hopes will play a large part in the discussions this afternoon and tomorrow.

Mike Klein has included in his opening remarks a statement about a social networking site I've been scratching my head about recently.  Mike commented on reports within the past few days that only 30 percent of those who register on Twitter come back after 30 days.  Since not too long after I registered on Twitter, I've wondered about its utility.  It seems to make sense for organizations like newspapers and web sites that want to drive traffic to their sites.  But for Joes like me, the utility of Twitter is far cloudier.

Dr. Barry Chaiken, the other conference chairman, has taken the podium to speak about Twitter and other social networking tools.  He cites technological and sociological differences between the United States and Europe to explain the difference in social networking usership from one shore of the Atlantic to the other.

Dr. Chaiken is now talking about how he's using social networking in the creation of a new worldwide organization called the Global Health Alliance.  The alliance was organized to share medical images and other clnical content and case information.  Social networking is helping to shape and drive the collaboration.  He's now displaying the portal--www.medting.com--through which this collaboration is occuring.  It looks easy to use and information rich.

Dr. Chaiken is now making very interesting comments about how the cultural norms of social networking have not been established.  Is commerical activity acceptable on Twitter and Facebook?  How deep into your network will you go for an introduction?  These and other rules are still being made.  It strikes me through my own experience with social networking that the lack of these rules is part of the reason that those tools fall flat on their faces for some, if not many, of us.

Mike has just asked Dr. Chaiken about the role of social media in communication about the H1N1 pandemic.  Dr. Chaiken believes that not all of the cases that have been discovered worldwide would have been known without social networking.  This has very important epidemiological advantages for the global response.  The bad side, however, of social and online media is that there is no regulator of what is true.  Many people, Dr. Chaiken said, will not eat pork in fear of catching the swine flu, even though there is not evidence the disease can be caught through pork consumption.

MADISON - Think consumers aren't paying to the health IT investments you make? Think again. A new study from Deloitte suggests that consumers are indeed interested in knowing what you're spending on health IT, especially tools that they might end up using directly.

According to the 2009 Deloitte Survey of Healthcare Consumers, more than half (55 percent) of consumers would like to communicate with their doctor via email, and 57 percent would like to schedule appointments, buying prescriptions and completing other transactions.

The 2009 Survey of Health Care Consumers, conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, is Deloitte's second annual study of health care consumers' attitudes, behaviors and unmet needs. It offers health care industry leaders and policymakers a comprehensive and timely perspective about how Americans approach their health, health care and health insurance.

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<b>WASHINGTON</b> - On Friday, April 17, 2009, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance specifying the technologies and methodologies that render protected health information unusable, unreadable, or indecipherable to unauthorized individuals, as required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed as part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).  This guidance was developed through a joint effort by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

 This guidance relates to two forthcoming breach notification regulations - one to be issued by HHS for covered entities and their business associates under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) (Sec. 13402 of HITECH) and one to be issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for vendors of personal health records and other non-HIPAA covered entities (Sec. 13407 of HITECH).  HITECH requires these regulations to be published within 180 days of enactment.  If the entities subject to the regulations apply the technologies and methodologies specified in the guidance to secure information, they will not be required to provide the notifications required by the regulations in the event the information is breached.  

 In addition to this guidance, HHS has also concurrently issued a request for information (RFI) soliciting public comment on the breach notification provisions of the HITECH Act to inform future rulemaking and updates to the guidance.  The guidance and RFI is available at www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy.  Once published in the Federal Register, the guidance and RFI will also be available for public comment at www.regulations.gov.

UPDATE!! - On April 7, 2009, CMS announced that it will not implement Phase II of the EHR Demonstration. CMS will continue with Phase I implementation, including local kick off meetings for more than 400 selected practices scheduled in May. Phase I demonstration operations will begin June 1, 2009. For more information on this decision, please see the download below named "Phase II Announcement  April 7, 2009."

Google is encountering protests from users who say the information its Google Health beta Website presents has the potential to be inaccurate when it comes to electronic medical records. 

Google Health, Google's health care IT solution, has been taken to task by physicians who say the billing information it uses for some patients' electronic medical records can give an inaccurate picture of their health conditions. Since rolling out in Feb. 2008, Google Health has been positioned as competition for Microsoft's health care IT offerings, as well as sites such as WebMD.

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MILWAUKEE - In a joint venture that provides customers with vendor of choice and quality of care solutions TeraMedica Healthcare Technology, an enterprise imaging and information management company, announced today that they are partnering with Compressus Inc., a provider of interoperability and workflow solutions. Leveraging the synergies of TeraMedica's Evercore -Clinical Enterprise Suite solution and the Compressus MEDxConnect product suite allows physicians and patients alike, to instantly access medical images such as X-rays, MRI scans or Cardiology exams, as well as other types of clinical digital content such as electronic reports, from a single work list.

Will the massive investment in healthcare IT will be meaningless in a global economy if the technology doesn't rein in runaway costs because healthcare spending is unsustainable in the current economic climate? According to former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan this may be the case. 

Simply pumping more dollars into Medicare will not solve the healthcare crisis in America. "We have to find a way to curtail the federal funding," Greenspan said in a keynote address to the annual HIMSS conference, and perhaps IT is that way.

"If you cannot solve the overall funding problem, the [global] competitive issue will be quite secondary," Greenspan said. "There's going to be a clash invariably because resources are not going to be as ample as they have been."

Today, I am delighted to launch the Fusion Healthcare Blog as a forum for health information technology buyers, users, integrators, investors and developers.  We want you to be part of the discussion. This blog will co-exist with WTN Media's Digital Healthcare Conferences. The next event is scheduled for May 6 - 7 in Madison, Wisconsin Please see www.dhc2009.com and come join us. 

Our initial coverage and blog topics will be form HIMSS 09 and lead up to DHC 2009. This is your community, so what would you like to see covered on Fusion Healthcare?