How can we solve the HIPAA paradox to enhance healthcare quality, value and learning? Hear a panel of leading providers reveal how to manage the obstacles and maximize the opportunities in leveraging digital health data to advance learning.

The United States is undergoing a digital healthcare revolution. The percentage of physicians using an advanced electronic health record (EHR) system almost tripled in the last five years. Hospital use skyrocketed from about 9% in 2008 to more than 80% in 2013. We already are seeing the benefits, with 88% of providers reporting that EHRs produce clinical benefits and 75% reporting quality improvements.

But there is a hurdle to realizing big data’s full value. While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) allows EHR data to be used easily for internal quality improvements, applications that support building a “learning health system” trigger more stringent regulation. HIPAA actually presents a barrier to leveraging EHRs and other digital data to fuel medical learning and treatment advances.

How should HIPAA evolve to fit the digital healthcare environment? How can we upgrade our regulatory framework to support a true learning health system? How can we use digital data to glean better, faster insights for improving patient care? Learn the answers at a new, free Manatt webinar, “HIPAA and the Learning Health System: Balancing the Risks and Benefits of the Digital Healthcare Revolution.”

Deven McGraw—Partner, Manatt Health, and the chair of the Privacy and Security Workgroup of the federal Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy Committee—will lead a panel of senior leaders from key providers in sharing:

• The potential health information privacy harms—and why health information is unique.
• The current federal regulation of health information risks—and why today’s framework for reusing health data is not sufficiently risk-based.
• The explanation of the HIPAA paradox—and the limits it places on creating a learning health system.
• The characteristics of a reimagined framework—and how regulatory change can be achieved.
• The route to establishing analytic practices that lower risks while driving learning.

The panelists are John Houston, Vice President of Privacy and Information Security and Associate Counsel of the Information Security Group at UPMC and Rachel Nosowsky, Deputy General Counsel at the University of California.

If you would like to receive an audio transcript of this webinar due to accessibility issues, please email us at webinars@manatt.com.

This program does not constitute legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship. Views expressed by presenters are strictly their own and should not be construed to be the views of Manatt or attributed to Manatt.