A National Health Encounter Surveillance System

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD Trust is essential for interoperability. One way to promote trust is to provide transparency and accountability for the proposed national system. People have come to expect email or equivalent notification when a significant transaction is made on our personal data. From a patient’s perspective, all health records transactions involving TEFCA are likely significant. When a significant transaction occurs, we expect contemporaneous notification (not the expectation that you have to ask first), a monthly statement of all transactions, and a clear indication of how an error or dispute can be resolved. We also expect the issuer of the notification to also be accountable for the transaction and to assist in holding other participants accountable if that becomes necessary. Each such notification should identify who accessed the data and how the patient can review the data that was accessed. Each time, the patient should be informed of the procedure to flag errors, report abuse, and opt-out of further participation at either the individual source or at the national level. Recommendation 1 :  Add Principle 2D as: Every transaction over the TEFCA network, including bulk access, is to be accompanied by a contemporaneous email to each individual patient and a monthly statement delivered via email or post if there is activity in that month. Make Patient-Directed Exchange the Baseline for a National API Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the future of i...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs