Questions over healthcare privacy and security rankled industry incumbents and new entrants alike.
2019 had hardly kicked off when the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the CMS released two companion proposals designed to revamp how providers, insurers and patients exchange health data. A vision of connecting patients with their data via apps in many ways underpinned the rules.
That vision was met with harsh words from industry groups.
Tackling interoperability: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the CMS released companion proposals tackling information-blocking and interoperability. As of deadline, the agencies had not released final versions of the rules.
Going public: Health Catalyst, Livongo and Phreesia began public trading within a week of one another, ending a nearly three-year drought since the last initial public offering of a digital health company.
Data sharing: Details emerged about a partnership between Ascension and Google, drawing public concern and sparking a federal probe into whether the companies followed HIPAA.
“Apps frequently do not provide patients with clear terms of how that data will be used,” the American Medical Association wrote in a letter to the ONC. The American Hospital Association wrote, “We do not believe that patients should have to sacrifice data protections and data privacy in order to receive easy access to their health information.”
In a world where systems, software and data are ever more connected, figuring out how to keep health data in the right hands has become an increasingly arduous task.
The American Medical Collection Agency in June disclosed that a hacker had gained access to its web payment system, compromising demographic and financial information of more than 20 million individuals. That may have come as a shock to patients who received services from LabCorp or Quest Diagnostics, which may not have realized their data was being held by the billing collections vendor.
In November, details emerged on a partnership between one of the largest health systems—Ascension—and consumer technology giant Google, triggering a federal probe and a national conversation about patient privacy. While it appears the deal didn’t violate HIPAA, it’s opened a broader discussion on how health systems should responsibly use and share patient data.
Send us a letter
Have an opinion about this story? Click here to submit a Letter to the Editor, and we may publish it in print.
