Health Care, Labor Organizations Urge Thompson
to Make 'Critical' Changes to HIPAA Privacy Regulations

WASHINGTON, October 24, 2001 – The nation's leading health care and employer organizations are asking HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to make critical changes to the HIPAA privacy rules. In a letter signed by the Healthcare Leadership Council (a coalition of chief executives from the nation's top health care companies), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Health Insurance Association of America and nearly two dozen other organizations, Secretary Thompson is being asked to address flaws in the privacy rules in areas ranging from research to oral communications.

According to the letter, "new rulemaking is urgently needed" in several areas, including:

• Medical research: The letter states that the current regulations will have a "chilling effect" on medical research because they will "adversely affect" researchers' ability to gather and use patient information.
  
  
• Prior consent: The group advocates changes to the current regulations that would allow providers to use patient information for "treatment, payment and health care operations" without obtaining consent first.
  
  
• Oral communications: The organizations state that the current regulations would prohibit verbal communications between providers and patients that are "necessary for treatment."
  
  
• "Minimum necessary" provision: The groups advocate the elimination of the "confusing" provision that bans providers from using any personal medical information beyond the minimum necessary to accomplish a given purpose.

"These changes are necessary in order for these patient privacy regulations to achieve its two critical goals," said Mary Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council. "We need to protect patient privacy, but we also need to maintain the free flow of information necessary for medical research and quality health care. There are still too many barriers in these regulations that will have an adverse effect on patients, health care consumers and health care providers. These changes need to be made, and they need to be made soon. Hospitals, pharmacists and other health care providers are already investing resources in new systems in order to comply with these regulations."