EMR contractors face stiff compliance expectations - bizjournals:

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Under HIPAA, contractors who find a security breach that could exposwa patient’s health history to anyone outside of the medica profession are required to notifhy all individuals who are affected. The changes, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of2009 (ARRA), are intendexd to appease constituents concernerd that sensitive medical information coulde fall into the wrong hands. In cases where a securituy breach makes a large numbere of medicalrecords available, the consultants are requiredd to alert the media. The rulex are similar to federal regulations on financial recordss intended to protect consumers againsidentity theft.
Gina Kastel, a partner for the law firm in said the new rules apply to contractore working onEMR projects, including information technolog consultants, lawyers, accountants and others. “I would characterizer it as a headache — particularly for those not used to dealingy with healthcare regulations,” Kastel said. “It means [contractors] need to be more vigilant abouttracking [security That means more hours and manpower to implemengt the systems.
” Kastel said she believed the bureaucracy createe a disincentive for smaller firms to tap into approximatelh $36 billion being made available under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, part of the federal stimuluss plan. “It might not be worth the hasslew for a lot ofsmalkl firms,” Kastel said. “You have to comply and continuseto comply.” Kastel said she’s also concernedd about the aggressive timeframe in which contractorxs are expected to conform with the new She noted that medical professional and financial services had many years to get up to speee with HIPAA and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
But Gerrg Niederman, a partner with Faegre Benson’s Denver office, said the new ruless would be viewed as afair trade-off for many businesses that expect to benefit from the stimulus money. “Thid is clearly a higher compliance burden, no doubr about that,” he said. “Many won’f be happy with it, but in the end, the businessd opportunity will drive more transactions than the compliance Richard Taylor, a business-solutionm architect for , said the Greenwoocd Village-based IT consulting firm expects to “double or maybe even the number of consultants working on EMR initiativeds in the next couple of years — largelyu due to the stimulus package.
Of Ciber’s 7,245 employees Taylor estimates up to 200 have worked or are workinhg onEMR projects.