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This Request for Information (RFI) would solicit the public’s views on whether there are provisions of the HIPAA Rules which present barriers that limit or discourage coordinated care and case management among hospitals, physicians (and other providers), payors, and patients, or otherwise impose regulatory burdens that may impede the transformation to value-based health care without providing commensurate privacy or security protections for patients' protected health information and while maintaining patients' ability to control the use or disclosure of their PHI and to access PHI. In addition to a general request for information, the RFI would specifically seek comment on a number of particular issues, including: (1) Methods of accounting of all disclosures of a patient's protected health information; (2) patients' acknowledgment of receipt of a providers' notice of privacy practices; (3) creation of a safeharbor for good faith disclosures of PHI for purposes of care coordination or case management; (4) disclosures of protected health information without a patient's authorization for treatment, payment, and health care operations; (5) the minimum necessary standard/requirement. This RFI would subsume the previous 0945-AA08 entry in the Regulatory Agenda.

Overall Description of Deadline: Required by the HITECH Act. Statutory deadline contingent on further regulatory action.

Statement of Need:

The HHS Deputy Secretary recently launched an initiative called the Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care. The goal of the Regulatory Sprint is to remove regulatory barriers that impede coordinated, value-based health care. This RFI is being produced to support the Regulatory Sprint.

Summary of the Legal Basis:

The HIPAA statute and its amendments.

Alternatives:

 None were considered as this RFI is intended to solicit various policies for improving HIPAA.

Anticipated Costs and Benefits:

No anticipated costs as this is not regulatory.  Benefits include receiving public feedback on potential policies to pursue in rulemaking.

Risks:

None known.