Aaron Collins: They actually went through and found a couple of key areas for improvement. In these key areas, key areas for improvement really increase the rights of the individual and make it a little bit easier to contain a useful copy of the health records and remove some of the burdens of the case management, the communication between the individual and the covered entities. I do believe, with that being the case, we’re still going to see a couple of other things tighten up, you know, just because of the fact that if you look at the number of breaches that are being reported, they’re consistently going up. You know, we’re not we’re not seeing breaches coming down. So there’s, there’s something in this that’s not effective, that needs to change.
Matthew Wallace: I’m hopeful again, I’m not the technical team member here. But I’m hopeful that in the spirit and the intent behind the idea of better interoperability and care management is what really lays out. I think that you know, case management, care management, navigation, you know, value-based all these buzzwords, we’ve been throwing around for 10 plus years now, and you actually do the specific care it doesn’t always pan out. And a lot of those barriers are not only from some HIPAA rules but also just the interoperability of systems. You know, we worked at a large health care nonprofit before coming to Easterseals, where we had one database, and most people in the field use the database, but some states won’t use the database. And all these organizations sold us on the idea that, Well, sure, they can talk to each other about what is right, this API and the script, and you know, I’m sure I’m oversimplifying it, and it will just work. And you finally get down to the place where you were had to do it and you realize that it wasn’t that simple, right? And, you know, hundreds of 1000s if not millions of dollars to do it. And so hopefully, the more policy side of that is that we can continue to encourage better cross communications between the systems which again, my amateur knowledge, with think that perhaps that might actually increase the security if we can make these things talk to one another in a more simplified way.
Aaron Collins: Right. It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be impossible for us to get a book or record across the street. It’s so difficult right now. And I think that the OCR realizes that.
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About Aaron Collins Aaron Collins is the systems administrator for the Developmental Center of the Ozarks. He is well versed in the building and maintenance of HIPAA compliant environments, firewall administration, FileMaker databases, Mitel phone controllers, and network administration.
About Matthew Wallace Matthew Wallace is the vice president of strategic initiatives and partnerships at Easterseals Louisiana. He’s passionate about the health of all people; he believes that when people are healthy, communities are healthy and thrive. In his current role, Wallace oversees government affairs, development, and communications.
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