Federal health IT advisors are struggling with whether new policies are needed to address an ongoing and increasingly common HIPAA issue likely to grow as baby boomers age, Government Health IT reports. The issue at hand is caregiver, family member and “personal representative” access to patients’ personal information, the report states; HIPAA’s privacy rule requires covered entities to provide someone authorized under state law to act on a patient’s behalf with access to their personal health data. The Health IT Policy Committee’s Privacy & Security Tiger Team Co-Chair Deven McGraw discussed whether policy should be developed on the matter or if “best practices” recommendations would suffice.
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