Got HIT? Tell Us Your Story!

CRHC is collaborating with the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) and The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to collect stories from rural facilities about their HIT experiences. If you've adopted technology, we want to know your story...What worked? What didn't work? What was critical to your success? How has HIT impacted your patient care, operations, or other important aspects of your work? Your story will be featured on THE Consortium website, and may be featured nationally on ONC’s website or incorporated into other material. ONC will contact you for permission to use your story prior to publication. Please submit your story today to Cari Fouts at cf@coruralhealth.org!

Registration Now Available - "In the Trenches with Electronic Health Records", May 26th, 1:30-3:00pm MT

Registration is now available for the May 26th Consortium Webinar from 1:30-3pm MT. "In the Trenches with Electronic Health Records" will be brought to you through a partnership with Colorado Health Foundation, THE Consortium and CACHIE. Four clinics, one an independent Rural Health Clinic, one a hospital-owned RHC, and two Federally Qualified Health Centers will present on their journey to adopt HIT and share lessons learned along the way.
**NOTE: The May 13th Webinar has been cancelled and this is a NEW DATE!

HIPAA HITECH Changes Continue

On Monday, the Office of Civil Rights released (in the Code of Federal Regulations) a Request for Information related to implementation of the Accounting of Disclosures changes mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and specifically the HITECH Act. The Act requires that disclosures for treatment, payment and operations must now be accounted for if, requested by the patient and if the covered entity uses an electronic health record. This change is substantially different from the original Privacy Rule which only required accounting for those PHI disclosures that were not treatment, payment or operations or subject to a patient’s written authorization.

As you can imagine this may be a very burdensome requirement both for the vendors of electronic health records and covered entities; physicians and hospitals alike generate thousands of routine disclosures of PHI every year (for example submitting insurance claims). OCR recognizes this burden and has asked for public comment on the impact of this requirement. THE Consortium and The Colorado Rural Health Center will be submitting comments that advocate for a less burdensome approach!