Vo l u m e x x v i i , N o . 11 F e b r u a r y 2 014
The I nde p endent M e dical Business N ewsp ap er
Statins for primary prevention What does the evidence tell us? By Kevin P. Peterson, MD
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y now nearly everyone has heard about the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Blood Cholesterol Guideline, which was published in mid-November. [Stone N, et al., J Am Coll Cardiol (Nov. 2013)] The new guidelines, which update the 2003 ACC/AHA guidelines, recommend moderate- or high-intensity statin therapy for four groups: • Patients who have cardiovascular disease • Patients with an LDL cholesterol level > 190 mg/dL
Health information privacy breaches There’s a law for that! By Diane Larson, MA, RHIA, CHPS, FAHIMA “Oh no! We inadvertently sent a copy of a patient’s medical record to the wrong patient. What should we do?” I don’t know if there’s an app for that, but there are definitely laws for that. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) requires HIPAA-covered entities to provide notification to affected individuals and to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services following the discovery of a breach of unsecured protected health information (PHI). Specifically, 42 U.S.C. §17932(a) states:
A covered entity that accesses, maintains, retains, modifies, records, stores, destroys, or otherwise holds, uses, or discloses unsecured protected health information shall, in the case of a breach of such information that is discovered by the covered entity, notify each individual whose unsecured protected health information has been, or is reasonably believed by the covered entity to have been, accessed, acquired, or disclosed as a result of such breach. In addition, there are relevant Minnesota and Wisconsin notifiPrivacy breaches to page 10
• Patients 40–75 years of age with type 2 diabetes • Patients 40–75 years of age with an estimated 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease of 7.5 percent or higher (the report includes a CV risk calculator) The release of the new guidelines was immediately followed by a flurry of editorials that supported, condemned, or strongly questioned the ACC/AHA expert panel’s findings, in large part because of the guideline’s potential significant impact on many patients. Indeed, under the new guidelines, Statins for primary prevention to page 12