Maine’s Office of the State Coordinator for HIT (OSCHIT) seeks proposals from individuals or organizations that are qualified to provide consultation services to advise a legal work group on issues involving security and privacy of health information. This information is needed to support health information exchanges.
The state’s legal working group held meetings in 2009-2010 to focus on emerging issues related to privacy and security of health information as applied to electronic health information exchange. The legal working group made a number of recommendations that were included in the Request for Proposal (201007748).
The scope of work is divided into distinct parts. The contractor is to:
• Facilitate four to five meetings on health information. The HIT Steering Committee’s legal working group’s draft recommendations for the state HIT plan can be found at www.maine.gov/hit/privacy_security.shtml.
• Advise on recommendations needed to address restrictions to electronically exchanging health information data on persons with behavioral health and/or HIV diagnoses
• Research all of the provisions of ARRA/HITECH including the HIPAA amendments, Maine’s General Privacy Law, Maine’s HIV Privacy Law, and Maine’s Mental Health Privacy Law to provide the information to the legal working group to use to reach a consensus on the recommendations.
• Develop a position for statute changes to healthcare privacy and security law consistent with the consensus of the legal working group.
• Facilitate discussion and deal with the input from the public on any changes proposed
• Prepare a draft document for review by December 31, 2010
• Finalize a summary of findings and prepare a position paper for use in developing recommendations to the legislature on changes to the health information privacy law if supported by the legal working group
• Provide input to OSCHIT on legislation hearings to articulate rationale for changes in health information privacy law if recommended
For more information, go to www.maine.gov/purchases/rfp. The proposal is due by August 31, 2010 with the work to run from September 2010 through March, 2011. The point of contact is James F. Leonard, Director of the Office of the State Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance. The email is james.f.leonard@maine.gov or fax (207) 624-7608.
