Proposed National Standards
Health and Human Services Privacy Regulations
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Donna E. Shalalaproposed today the first-ever set of national standards to protectthe privacy of Americans’ personal health records. The standardswill apply to medical records created by health care providers,hospitals, health plans, and health care clearinghouses that areeither transmitted or maintained electronically, and the paperprintouts created from those records."The privacy of Americans is protected in their bank transactions,their credit card statements, and even their video rentals. Yet,until today, Americans had no Federal privacy protections fortheir medical records," Secretary Shalala said. She notedthat Americans are increasingly worried that the privacy of theirmedical information will be violated….
