Currently, trade groups from the Health Care and IT industries are pushing new legislation (H.R. 3800 "Promoting Health Information Technology Act" and H.R. 1693 "Wire for Health Care Quality Act") that would expand the interoperability of health systems (read as access to your health records!). The privacy provisions of these bills are very weak! Their other qualities may or may not be good. I did not review them from any perspective but privacy and security. From those perspectives, they do not measure up to HR 2991 "Independent Health Records Trust Act" whose sole purpose is privacy and security.
Reason for acting on HR 2991 NOW: Once this egg is mixed it may be impossible to un-mix!! Retroactively implementing security policy could be extremely difficult and may require relaxation of the would-be provisions of HR 2991 as compared with making these guarantees up front!
Studies by the Markle Group (www.markle.org) strongly suggest that policy issues in health IT easily become legal entanglements (so IT issues become settled by lawyers--not good). Security & privacy policy must be strong and comprehensive before broadly implementing health record technology.
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