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Compliance: A New Wave of Regulations Begin
Government stimulus is beginning to flow. That includes assistance to banks and to car makers. Even health care is seeing funding — $19 billion dollars are being set aside. Part of the stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) was the inclusion of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. HITECH will provide federal dollars to subsidize the implementation of electronic health records for health care providers.
While the announcement is big news for eHealth records, hidden away in the HITECH Act is also additional language around stricter HIPAA compliance. The language was no doubt added because as electronic Health Records become more widespread the potential for abuse becomes a bigger concern.
HITECH expands the potential role for state attorney generals to become involved in the enforcement of compliance. That’s where things can become complicated. Each state can interpret and enforce the law in the way that they feel works best for their state. And that means that for businesses that are active across multiple states, there is a potential for a patch-work of differing enforcements from the federal and various states for HIPAA data which they must comply with. And violators could be subject to both state and federal penalties.
HIPAA compliance will become significantly more complex and the penalty for noncompliance will be more severe. HITECH is probably the first of many more rigid regulations that will go into effect in the near future.
