Health Privacy and Security in the Time of TEFCA: Raising the Bar for Trusted Exchange

The following is a guest article by Dave Cassel, Chief Customer Officer at Health Gorilla and Former Executive Director of Carequality Talking about privacy and security in health information exchange is tricky. Saying you want to improve it implies that it isn’t good enough now, and that’s never the message we want to send. But improvements can always be made, and must be made. As with many things, there are degrees – and when it comes to health data, you can never be too private or too secure. Established by the 21st Century Cures Act, the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) holds so much promise. By creating an on-ramp for the superhighway of nationwide health data exchange, TEFCA makes sure patient records follow the patient wherever they go. But like any highway, guardrails and limits are absolutely necessary for keeping everyone safe. In fact, Health Gorilla’s 2023 State of Interoperability Report found that 91 percent of health system CIOs support TEFCA but 58 percent expressed the need for more protection and guardrails around the data. And 75 percent reported that data privacy and security as their primary concern regarding TEFCA. Health IT Security reported just last month that the number of health records exposed rose from 21.1 million in 2019 to 28.5 million in 2021 – and 35 percent more patients were impacted in the second half of 2022. That’s a disturbing thing to hear, and yet not surprising. In particular, electronic health reco...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Analytics/Big Data EMR-EHR Health IT Company Healthcare IT Interoperability Security and Privacy Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CMS Dave Cassel Electronic Health Record Health Gorilla Health IT Security Healthcare Priva Source Type: blogs