Compliance Notes (published by UT Southwestern's Institutional Compliance Operations Office)

Summer 2003 - Computer Security

Fall 2004 - Security of Laptops and Protected Health Information

Spring 2005 -

Winter 2005 -

Fall 2006 - HIPAA Privacy Monitoring & Physical Safeguards for HIPAA Privacy

Texans in Favor of Electronic Health Records, According to Poll

According the Houston Chronicle (January 18, 2007), Texans overwhelmingly told pollsters in a statewide survey that they believe electronic health records will improve quality and efficiency of health care. Of those polled, 43 percent predicted major improvement and 33 percent predicted minor improvement. Commenting on the results, Dr. Peter Traber, president of Baylor College of Medicine, said that certain problems cited in the poll, such as duplicate medical tests and wrong prescriptions, were “probably underestimated.” The vice president for government relations of the Texas Hospital Association, John Hawkins, called the results as evidence of a “cry for reform.” Hawkins pointed out that electronic health records is “our [number one] concern in the Texas Legislature” and that the poll results reflect citizen concerns about the cost of health care, especially for the uninsured. Hawkins also commented that Texas physicians have been slow to implement electronic health records systems, which can cost about $25,000 per doctor.

Keeping Patients’ Details Private, Even From Kin

The New York Times – July 3, 2007

By Jane Gross

An emergency room nurse in Palos Heights, Ill., told Gerard Nussbaum he could not stay with his father-in-law while the elderly man was being treated after a stroke. Another nurse threatened Mr. Nussbaum with arrest for scanning his relative’s medical chart to prove to her that she was about to administer a dangerous second round of sedatives.

The nurses who threatened him with eviction and arrest both made the same claim, Mr. Nussbaum said: that access to his father-in-law and his medical information were prohibited under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, as the federal law is known.

Mr. Nussbaum, a health care and HIPAA consultant, knew better and stood his ground. Nothing in the law prevented his involvement. But the confrontation drove home the way HIPAA is misunderstood by medical professionals, as well as the frustration — and even peril — that comes in its wake.

To read the rest of the article, click the following link: NYT Article, 3 July 2007.