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Alaska legislators approve update for law that allows data sharing between hospitals
By James Brooks
Alaska Beacon
The Alaska Legislature has approved a bill that would update the law that governs how hospitals and clinics within the state share patient records and other health information.
In an 18-0 vote on Friday, the Alaska Senate approved Senate Bill 272, sending it to Gov. Mike Dunleavy for enactment or veto. The state House approved it 34-6 on Thursday.
Under existing state and federal law, the Alaska Department of Health is allowed to pick a third-party organization to operate a “Health Information Exchange” that transmits electronic health records from one hospital or clinic to another.
In Alaska, the organization is HealthEconnect Alaska, a nonprofit.
If signed into law, SB 272 would clarify the roles of the Department of Health and the organization operating the exchange. People whose records are transmitted through the exchange would be allowed to consent or object to different uses of their data.
Kendra Sticka, executive director of HealthEconnect, testified in March that the new law is needed because when the original information exchange law was written in 2009, state officials weren’t sure how it would work in practice.
“And so the language in the current statute is somewhat confusing because we didn’t know what it was going to be,” she said.
• James Brooks Cascade is a longtime Alaska reporter who lives in Juneau. He previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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