|
STHC-L: The Science, Technology and Health Care Archives Forum
[Previous Posting] [Next Posting] Re: HIPAA Covered Entities & Access Appeals
Shelia, I applaude you on your efforts to provide broader access to your collections. Why are your reserachers being denied access? Weak cases or a risk adverse decision making body? What is the decision making body at your hospital where your reserachers apply for access? an IRB, a Privacy Board or the some other hospital body, like the legal office? Who decides access? At Johns Hopkins, our Privacy Board really only handles requests for archival research and not clinical investigations that might involve patient follow up. We do have an appeals process. If a case is denied, the Privacy Board advises the applicant why it was denied and allows the option of either the researcher seeking individual authorization for research from the subjects of PHI or the researcher can revise the application and resubmit to the Privacy Board. Otherwise access can only be given to collection materials that have been screened and redacted of PHI by our staff. Our policy is to use the Privacy Board application process as a means to educate our reserachers about what the Privacy Rule under HIPAA does and does not allow. By the time applications have reached the Privacy Board, they are usually strong enough to be approved. The Hopkins Privacy Board has denied very few cases. If interested, I'd be happy to share my experiences as the liason between the researchers and the Privacy Board. Link to our access forms, including Privacy Board (D-1): http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/access.htm Phoebe Evans Letocha Collections Management Archivist Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions 410-735-6785 pletocha@jhmi.edu http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu ____________________________________________________________ STHC-L - Science, Technology, and Health Care Archives Forum STHC-L@lists.ucla.edu http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sthc-l STHC-L@lists.ucla.edu STHC-L Archives -- Main Index STHC-L Archives -- 2007 Message Index |