The Preferred Format For Clinical Health Information

The preferred format for clinical health information is Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) for both Personal Health Record (PHR) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR). It is XML-based format identifies the encoding, configuration, and semantics of a clinical file. Blue Button+ Direct implementation ensures ease of transmission of medical records to a third party by the health care provider or patient. Direct uses SMTP, S/MIME, and X.509 licenses to maintain security, data reliability, privacy and verification of sender and receiver. Additionally, it meets the requirements for Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 of View, Download, and Transmit (VDT) that is required for certified electronic medical record (EMR)†¦show more content†¦PHRs can contain medical information from the patient, whereas an EHR contains medical records, medical history, patient demographics, medications, vital and weight, and diagnosis. Some PHRs are obtainable by covered entities under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. The HIPAA Privacy Rule applies to these types of PHRs. However, in the cases where PHRs are not offered by HIPAA covered entity, it becomes the responsibility of the PHR vendor to establish privacy policies and follow any laws that may apply protecting the data in the PHR (HHS, 2003). HIPAA covered entities are regulated by the Privacy Rule on how they access the PHR to enter health information. Furthermore the Privacy Rule oversees the use and disclosure of an individual’s protected health information (PHI) and EHR, gives individuals certain rights to their health information, and requires the cover entity to appropriately safeguard health information. Covered entities may hire a third party entity, as a business associate, to administer the PHR and its related tasks. The covered entity must ensure that the information will be appropriately safegu arded by the business associate through a contract or agreement. The business associate nor the covered entity can release information for any