Lower anxiety

We questioned IT leaders again this year in the Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician Survey of Executive Opinions on Key Information Technology Issues about several of the more stringent privacy policies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and what impact they might have on their organizations.

The ban on the sale of patient data would have no impact, according to most leaders surveyed (88%), with another 11% indicating the ban would have a positive impact and just 1% expecting a negative impact.

On the breach notification rules, 56% of those surveyed said the requirements would have no impact, 33% a negative impact and 11% a positive impact.

Some 56% of those surveyed expect no impact from a provision in the stimulus law affording patients control over the exchange of their information to their insurance companies if they pay for the related visit, treatment or procedure out of pocket. Another 32% expect a negative impact, while 12% see a positive impact.

Stiffer penalties for privacy violations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that were part of the ARRA privacy update would have no impact, according to a majority (54%) of those surveyed, but 41% expect a negative impact, while 5% expect a positive impact.

All of the above numbers from this year's survey seem to indicate that healthcare leaders had somewhat lower levels of anxiety about the privacy rules than those who took the survey last year. For example, regarding breach notification, last year 42% of respondents thought the new rule would have no impact on their organizations, 14 percentage points lower than in this year's survey; meanwhile, a plurality (44%) last year indicated the breach notification would have a negative impact, 11 percentage points more than the current survey.

The percentage of respondents this year who sense the penalties will have no impact went up slightly (7 percentage points) compared with last year, while those who felt they will have a negative impact or a positive impact went down slightly, by 2 and 5 percentage points, respectively.

In 2006, the federal government granted waivers from Stark and anti-kickback laws to hospitals that subsidize the extension of health IT to affiliated physicians. Among those surveyed this year, 43% were from organizations that offered IT benefits to affiliated physicians under those waivers. But 57% were not. Adding EHR incentive money to hospitals' IT arsenals has had little influence on the waiver program, respondents indicated.

Asked if the availability of IT incentive dollars had influenced their organizations to go forward with a waiver program, 62% indicated “no,” while 38% said “yes.”

Last year, the government established a network of 62 health IT regional extension centers, or RECs, to promote IT adoption; we asked survey respondents whether they expect their organizations to directly benefit from the REC program.

Among physician group leaders, the numbers were 10% “yes,” 10% “no” and 80% unsure. At hospitals, the numbers were 44% “yes,” 18% “no” and 38% unsure.