RTI International - News Release - 5.23.2006
22 States Join National Health Information Privacy and Security Collaboration
Agreements pending with 12 states, U.S. territories
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- RTI International announced today that 22 states have signed agreements to join a national collaborative effort to address privacy and security policy questions affecting interoperable health information exchange. Twelve additional states and U.S. territories are expected to sign agreements within two weeks.
The privacy and security project is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) strategy to identify variations in privacy and security practices and laws affecting electronic clinical health information exchange, develop best practices and propose solutions to address identified challenges, and increase expertise about health information privacy and security protection in communities.
States and territories selected to participate are charged with bringing together a broad range of stakeholders to develop consensus-based solutions to problematic variations in privacy and security business policies, practices and state laws.
The participating states include: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Twelve additional states and U.S. territories also have been invited to join the project.
The project, being managed by RTI in cooperation with the National Governors Association under contract to HHS, is a public-private collaboration that seeks to reduce variations in business policies and state laws related to the privacy and security of health information. RTI is working with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT at HHS (ONC).
"Current policies and laws governing the security and privacy of health care information vary considerably nationwide," said Linda Dimitropoulos, RTI's project director. "This collaborative effort among experts will help us work through the myriad security and privacy issues so that policy makers at the state and federal levels can begin to address the concerns that will allow Americans to benefit from improved sharing of health care information."
To make it possible to fund all proposals with technical merit, the ONC will add $5.73 million to the existing contract with RTI, bringing its total value to $17.23 million.
The participating states and territories will finish state-level interim assessments and analyze solutions by fall 2006, completing the project by March 2007. At that time, representatives from each region will discuss implementation plans that will allow electronic sharing of health information across states and territories.
The governors of all 55 U.S. states and territories were invited to submit proposals to participate in the privacy and security project. The subcontracts were awarded as part of a competitive process based on an evaluation of proposals against technical and cost criteria and the ability to meet the requirements of the project.