The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has begun a new weekly blog on permitted and appropriate uses of healthcare patient information. You might find it useful.
The first blog article is entitled The Real HIPAA Supports Interoperability. The series emphasizes that HIPAA not only protects personal health information from misuse, it also enables personal health information to be accessed, used or disclosed interoperably, when and where it is needed for patient care. A new blog will be posted every Thursday, with the final blog in the series released on February 25, 2016.
The fact sheets and blog posts detail specific common circumstances where health care providers or payers are permitted to share PHI without prior patient authorization, such as an inpatient facility to prospective long-term care facilities, or between unaffiliated hospitals in the same community who treat the same patient.
Download the fact sheets
Permitted Uses and Disclosures: Exchange for Health Care Operation [PDF – 1.3 MB]
Permitted Uses and Disclosures: Exchange for Treatment [PDF – 1.1 MB]
