Taking meaningful issue with the AHA

Journalists love a spirited debate, often for selfish reasons. No matter who loses in the verbal joust, we win with a good story. On Monday, the American Hospital Association filed its public comments with the CMS to its proposed Stage 2 meaningful-use rules.

Yesterday, Christine Bechtel struck the AHA with a blog blast. Bechtel's post on the website of the National Partnership for Women & Families, charged the AHA with having "little interest in advancing meaningful-use criteria that would result in tangible benefits for patients."

Bechtel is a vice president of the partnership and an active outside adviser in federal health information technology policymaking. She is a member of the federally chartered Health IT Policy Committee and serves on six of its work groups, including ones focused on meaningful use and privacy. In her committee work, she is neither a rabble-rouser nor a wallflower.

Bechtel offers as an example of AHA recalcitrance its call for extending the compliance period in the Stage 2 rule to 30 days for hospitals to respond to a patient's request to "view, download and transmit" electronic copies of their medical records. HHS' proposed rule calls for access in 36 hours, she says.

Bechtel says the AHA "throws in a veritable kitchen sink of other arguments" against the CMS' proposed shorter access time. She says the AHA arguments range "from alleged HIPAA (privacy) conflicts to feasibility complaints."

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act issues that the AHA raises "are wholly without legal merit," she says, adding that it's "absurd to use HIPAA, a law designed to protect patients," to undermine patient interests.

I do raise one small objection to Bechtel's assertion that HIPAA was designed to protect patients.

Maybe lawmakers in 1996 had protection in mind, but multiple times in the years since, HHS, the Justice Department, and any number of data miners have used HIPAA as a dumb show for the public, misleading people to believe they have privacy protections when, most often, they do not.

Still, grab some popcorn, click here, and read what Bechtel has to say.

She's an effective counterpuncher.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn.