In our initial blog post of February 20th, “For Your Radar – Huge Implications for Healthcare in Pending Privacy Legislation,” we broadly discussed six key issues for healthcare stakeholders in the potential federal privacy and data protection legislation. We committed to future posts comparing and contrasting specific legislative proposals. What’s happened...
Welcome to My New Page
Since I became the Chief Regulatory Officer at Ciitizen, I’ve been posting a lot on our blog, The Voice of Ciitizens.It’s been a great platform that helped put Ciitizen on the map for many people, but now we’ve moved my voice here — to a bigger stage — with one main goal: to help...
The Value of Health Data — Clinical Trials
The Value of Health Data — Clinical TrialsUdeMNouvelles — Université de MontréalLast year, when we first began helping cancer patients collect their medical records, I had a conversation with the wife of a cancer patient to gage her interest in having her husband’s cancer records.He was just getting ready to begin chemotherapy for liver cancer, and she...
Re: How Many Calls to Get to the Center?
And the answer is …… 329!For just 95 records requests it took 329 calls to get to someone who would agree to send the records the patients were requesting. And 128 of these calls were escalations to privacy officers.If you think that this was because we were dealing with very small doctors’...
How Many Phone Calls to Get to the Center of the HIM Department?
Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, covered entities — including hospitals, doctors, and health plans — must have processes in place to assure that individuals can exercise their rights, including the HIPAA Right of Access. We first blogged about this obligation back on February 12th .When we first started sending patient requests for their records, we...
Knowledge of Your HIPAA Rights is Power
I sincerely hope that everyone on this planet has read and imbibed Deven’s post Empowering Patients: Know your rights!Her valuable HIPAA lesson will help you fully understand your rights as a patient to better navigate the roadblocks that often stand between you and your health data. Even with this information the...
Empowering Patients: Know Your Rights
At Ciitizen, we’re here to make sure you know your HIPAA rights regarding your health information. If you’ve ever tried to get a copy of your health records, you’ve probably hit a lot of roadblocks. Myths about HIPAA and your right to get your health information are rampant. Here are...
Family History is Key in Cancer, Yet Still Patients Wait
In our last post, Deven talked about the difficulties people face when seeking access to a family member’s medical records, and it struck a nerve with me. In my blog post from November 13, 2018 , I talked about my mother’s positive BRCA test result. This sequel involves sharing that test...
Asking For A Friend
I often get asked whether a close friend or family member can ask for another individual’s medical records. The very sick often have little energy to devote to obtaining their records, a time and energy-consuming process, so friends and family members frequently act as caregivers, and they are eager to...
On the Clock
In our previous post, we talked about the limitations of static patient portals, which hopefully will soon be going the way of the dinosaur. But not soon enough. In our work to help patients get all of their medical records related to their cancer diagnosis and care, we have noticed...
