Medical records privacy workshop at UW next week

Several UW units are hosting a regional workshop next week on “Privacy, Security and Confidentiality of Medical Records: Complying with Sweeping New HIPAA Requirements.” The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) will take effect at the end of 1999 unless Congress enacts further legislation.

The workshop will be held Monday and Tuesday, May 24 and 25, in room 106B of the HUB on campus. UW faculty and staff are eligible for a reduced registration rate of $350, which includes a copy of a comprehensive new toolkit developed by the Computer-based Patient Record Institute, one of the conference sponsors.

The UW host units are the IAIMS (Integrated Advanced Information Management System) Program, based in the Health Sciences Library; the Division of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Medical Education, and Medical Centers Information Systems.

Last year Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala proposed a series of new standards for protecting individual health information when it is maintained or transmitted electronically. These standards were mandated in the HIPAA legislation. The Health and Human Services Department also issued standards relating to use of the Internet for transmitting Medicare information to the Health Care Financing Administration.

“HIPAA provides a framework that any medical organization can use to evaluate its performance with regard to security and privacy,” noted Tom Martin, chief information officer of UW Medical Centers Information Systems.

Other regional workshops in the series are being held in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

For more information on the workshop, see the Web site at http://www.nonprofitmgt.com/privacy/