HIPAA HITECH Regulations on June 26th, Rumor Says

Posted June 15, 2010 02:22 PM by Jack Anderson CEO Compliance Helper    

What do January 17th, 2010 and June 26th 2010 have in common?  They are "effective" dates for compliance with the HIPAA HITECH Act passed into federal law on January 17th, 2009.  For those of us that spent a lot of 2009 developing solutions for the healthcare organizations affected by this it has been a frustrating wait.  And of course there is no guarantee that the June 26th date will really happen either.  So you say what is the problem with a little wait?  During this time over 2.5 million patient records were breached.  Could proper privacy and security policies and procedures have prevented all of these breaches, of course not, but some percentage could have been prevented.  Security and privacy programs really do reduce breaches or this would all be an exercise in futility.  The point is that compliance is a process and the sooner you start the process the safer your PHI remains.

If it is June 26th, so be it, but OCR needs to do a much better job of communicating, especially with the business associates who are thoroughly confused by now.  Keep it simple, make it plain, get compliant, stay compliant, and be able to prove compliance.