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The Healthcare Leadership Council and the Confidentiality Coalition submitted comments on the proposed HTI-5 rule supporting efforts to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens while emphasizing that patient privacy, data security, and trust must remain protected as health information technology rules are updated. They urged the government to preserve safeguards that enable the secure exchange of health information and avoid changes that could weaken confidentiality protections or create new privacy risks. Overall, the letter advocates for a balanced approach that encourages innovation and interoperability in healthcare while maintaining strong protections for sensitive patient data.

The Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC) and the Confidentiality Coalition urge Congress to create a federal, comprehensive, harmonized data privacy and security law that preempts state laws, preserves HIPAA, and supports innovation, interoperability, and clinical research.

In this letter to NCVHS, the Confidentiality Coalition says COVID-19 showed that health data is hard to share because there’s no single data standard and reporting metrics differ across federal, state, and local levels. It asks HHS to create common standards, and to make sure privacy protections are in place before data outside HIPAA is shared.

In this letter to HHS OCR, the Confidentiality Coalition supports HHS’s proposed HIPAA changes to make care coordination easier, but warns that patients lose privacy protection when their records go to third-party apps outside HIPAA. It asks for stronger rules for those apps, more consistent interoperability rules, and an end to the accounting of disclosures rulemaking.