If data is the new oil, there ’ s going to be war over it

By MATTHEW HOLT I am dipping into two rumbling controversies that probably only data nerds and chronic care management nerds care about, but as ever they reveal quite a bit about who has power and how the truth can get obfuscated in American health care.  This piece is about the data nerds but hopefully will help non-nerds understand why this matters. (You’ll have to wait for the one about diabetes & chronic care). Think about data as a precious resource that drives economies, and then you’ll understand why there’s conflict. A little history. Back in 1996 a law was passed that was supposed to make it easy to move your health insurance from employer to employer. It was called HIPAA (the first 3 letters stand for Health Insurance Portability–you didn’t know that, did you!). And no it didn’t help make insurance portable. The “Accountability” (the 1st A, the second one stands for “Act”) part was basically a bunch of admin simplification standards for electronic forms insurers had been asking for. A bunch of privacy legislation got jammed in there too. One part of the “privacy” idea was that you, the patient, were supposed to be able to get a copy of your health data when you asked. As Regina Holliday pointed out in her art and story (73 cents), decades later you couldn’t. Meanwhile, over the last 30 years America’s venerable community and parochial hospitals merged into large health systems, mostly to be able to stick it to ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Policy Health Tech The Business of Health Care 21st Century Cures Act Carequality Data Epic HIPAA Integritort Joe Biden Judy Faulkner MDPortals Novellia Particle Health Reveleer TEFCA Source Type: blogs