HIPAA becomes IT lightning rod

Looming federal patient privacy regulations and approaching Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 compliance deadlines are the biggest concerns of healthcare providers, according to preliminary results of a survey released at the February annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Some 61% of this year's respondents rated the need to upgrade security on IT systems to meet HIPPAA requirements as their highest IT priority in the coming year, up from 55% last year. Some 54% believe HIPAA will be the top priority next year as well, up from 51% in 2000. Losing ground was the deployment of Internet technology-last year's number one IT concern-which was cited by 46% of this year's participants, compared with 63% in 2000. Complete and final results of the survey will be available on the HIMSS Web site (www.himss.org) in early March.

2/28/01, Issue # 1504, page 2.