According to a report, "On the Front Lines of Healthcare Privacy," issued by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the role of privacy officers in healthcare has changed due to the evolution of health information exchanges, state-level privacy and security standards that are more stringent than HIPAA, and numerous high-profile security and privacy breaches.
In the report, AHIMA spoke with four privacy professionals, all of whom provided insight on how privacy officers:
- Now play a broader role within their healthcare organizations.
- Do work that has become more complex, with the introduction of health information exchanges and increased interest from the public.
- Face challenges that still exist with some HIPAA standards.
- Deal with the long-standing task of educating consumers about their privacy rights.