HIPAA Blog

[ Friday, August 05, 2005 ]

 

Radiology special: EHRs and PACS. I sometimes link to interesting things I hear about electronic health records or electronic medical records (sometimes I use EMR, sometimes EHR, usually depending on what the source uses), because that intersection between technology and medical/health records is a flashpoint for potential HIPAA issues, particularly on the Security Rule side but also impacting Privacy as well as TCS (Transaction and Code Sets, not TechCentralStation) issues.

Personally, I have a lot of radiology clients. While radiologists are unusually low-impacted by HIPAA (they are indirect providers, don't usually have patient contact, don't usually need to have a Notice of Privacy Practices, etc.), they are also, almost inadvertently, on the cutting edge of the electronic storage of medical information, primarily because of the dramatic growth in the electronic storage of radiological imaging. As is the case with amateur and professional photographers, a lot of what used to go on film now goes digital, in what is commonly (if inartfully) called a Picture Archiving and Communications System, or PACS.

The reason I bring this all up is that I came across this article last night (free registration required) about Kaiser's efforts to integrate their existing PACS system with their new "HealthConnect" EMR effort. According to the Kaiser folks, if your PACS and EMR are both web-based applications, and your vendors work well together, it's not that hard to integrate both processes. Of course, I wonder if you couldn't say that about just about any technology.

Jeff [10:04 AM]

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