The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was jointly drafted by CMS, the HHS Office for Civil Rights and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and proposes to amend regulations under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 and HIPAA privacy regulations. The new rules would allow patients to access their test results reports directly from labs.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has also released a voluntary Personal Health Record Model Privacy Notice, which creates a standardized template for consumers to compare PHR products.
Related Articles on HHS and Health IT:
HHS’ Annual Report on HIPAA Compliance Reveals Top Issues for Investigation
HHS Reports Data Breaches of Protected Health Information in 2009-2010 to Congress
HHS Grants More Than $11.9M for Health IT Implementation in Rural Areas
