FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 22, 2001
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American Nurses Association President Defends Patient Privacy Rule At House Subcommittee Hearing
Washington, DC -- Testifying before a House subcommittee hearing today, American Nurses Association (ANA) President Mary Foley, MS, RN, urged the Department of Health and Human Services to proceed on schedule with implementing a standard that protects the privacy and confidentiality of patients' health information. The rule was issued in December 2000 and is one of a number of regulations under review by the Bush administration.
In her testimony, Foley noted, "The most important test these regulations must meet is whether patients' reasonable expectations for privacy and confidentiality are met. If patients do not have such assurance, many will go without treatment or will disclose only some information, which can lead to improper diagnosis, improper treatment, complications in an illness or injury, even death." She made her remarks before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, at a hearing titled "Assessing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: How Federal Medical Record Privacy Regulations Can Be Improved."
At the hearing, Foley further noted that the regulation's requirement that "a covered entity must reasonably safeguard protected health information from any intentional or unintentional use or disclosure..." is already a part of accreditation standards for hospitals, and any suggestion that it is a new or burdensome requirement for health care institutions is unfounded.
"For nurses, the first issue is protecting our patients," Foley said, adding, "virtually all of ANA's members are involved in creating, transmitting, maintaining and safeguarding patient records on a daily basis" and that this commitment has always been a part of professional practice. "But the need for the federal law is in large part a function of the momentous change in communications technology," Foley added. With the widespread use of the Internet and other new technologies, "transgressions of patient confidentiality, intentional or not, have much broader consequences than ever before, because the information travels further and faster and cannot be retrieved.
"The regulation, as issued, is too important to be delayed or rescinded," Foley concluded, while noting that there is ample time for compliance and enough leeway for administrative or legislative remedies to be applied later, if any aspect of the rule should prove to be unworkable. "We have a patchwork of state laws that provide some protections to some people, some of the time, in some places," she stated. "But what we need is this national standard of basic protections for all of our people, all of the time, in every place in the nation."
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The American Nurses Association is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's nearly 2.7 million Registered Nurses through its 54 constituent associations. ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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