health care operations that can include quality assessment and improvement activities such as outcomes evaluation.
The AHA added that all participating providers need to be able to share and conduct population-based data analyses to achieve meaningful quality and efficiency improvements.
Congress should require, the AHA said in the letter, that the HIPAA medical privacy regulations enforced by the Office for Civil Rights permit a patient’s medical information to be used by and disclosed to all their providers. But they explained that the patient shouldn’t have to have a direct relationship with all of the organizations and providers that technically ‘use’ and/or have access to the data.
