Leveraging HIPAA to support consumer empowerment

The consumer empowerment movement needs to provide consumers with more access and control of their healthcare records. The premise of this article is that there is a fundamental market shift towards consumer empowerment--and technology is the driving force. We contend the results will satisfy the intent of the HIPAA mandate. Two restrictions impede the market from moving toward real consumer empowerment. First, managing one's own health history record is difficult because the complete record is segmented in disparate systems that are difficult to integrate. This is because unique identifiers and consistent coding are nonexistent. Second, security and control of patient identifiable health information is still evolving. There is no consensus among providers for Internet security, as we can see by all the legislative privacy bills trying to address the issue. HIPAA is both a legislative mandate and an enabler of the next healthcare paradigm. Providers must comply with the HIPAA mandates for electronic data interchange (EDI) code sets, administrative simplification, and privacy and confidentiality protocols. By recognizing HIPAA as part of a consumer-driven movement, organizations can incorporate empowerment strategies into a planning process that creates consumer options in healthcare and leverages HIPAA compliance to benefit both providers and consumers. This article suggests methods for meeting HIPAA compliance through innovative consumer empowerment methods.