HealthITSecurity reports on HIPAA loopholes resulting in the compromise of patient privacy. States are collecting medical data and selling it to researchers and other third parties. Discharge information is exempt from HIPAA privacy rules requiring the removal of 18 patient identifiers, for example. While many states remove the identifiers for discharge data anyway, Washington does not. “While the Office for Civil Rights hasn’t reported any complaints on the matter, the amount of discretion that’s allowed toward states when it goes to de-identifying data is an interesting privacy conversation,” the report states.
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