PwC: Why health data questions drive you crazy

Federal regulators say they will audit “business associates” of health insurers to see how those associates are handling personal health information.

The Office for Civil Rights, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to verify whether insurers’ associates — including health insurance agents and brokers — are complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) health information privacy and data security requirements.

See also: Office preps for HIPAA privacy audits

Meanwhile, some of the nastiest fights insurers and producers face involve allegations that health information privacy data security efforts are tying patients, health care providers, whistleblowers and patients’ loved ones in knots.

See also: Alzheimer’s panel calls for privacy change

Agents and brokers may run into HIPAA privacy concerns when they talk to a husband who is simply trying to help his wife clear up an insurance enrollment problem, when they rush an unconscious neighbor to the hospital, or even when they want to see their own medical records without jumping through a million time-consuming hoops.

Analysts at an arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the PwC Health Research Institute, have published data of their own on the consumer attitudes behind the conflicts that created and expanded the knots.

To learn more about what the PwC analysts found, read on.

1. Consumers are scared to death of privacy violations

The PwC analysts found a document on a Dell SecureWorks Inc. site in which security specialists suggested that some personal health records may sell for as much as $1,300 per record.

When PwC itself polled consumers, it found that consumers said they favored privacy over convenience for most health data.