New Health Care Developments Promote Patient/Consumer Involvement in Care

The federal government recently proposed two initiatives that have the potential to increase patient engagement and awareness of their own health care. First, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) of the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) released its Personal Health Record (PHR) Model Privacy Notice, which ONC hopes will give patients/consumers an increased awareness of PHR vendors’ privacy, security and data sharing practices. Second, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other HHS agencies issued proposed rules that would allow patients direct access to laboratory test results.

Click on the PDF link above to view the full alert.