Re: Feb 2 AHIMA meeting on S. 1360

[ahlewis@scsn.net]

  On 3 Feb Mr. Gellman wrote, in reply (as it were) to Mr. Love's 
  account of the AHIMA meeting:
  
  
  A second proposal involved annual reporting by trustees on the
  number of records accessed.  My comment on this proposal was that
  we already know that many users of health records obtain large
  numbers of records.  For example, we spend billions of tax
  dollars annually on health research, and a good deal of it
  involves access to health records.  I don't find it very useful
  to spend money to determine precisely whether the number of
  records accessed is one million, five million, or ten million. 
  
  
  Good grief!  The point would be to shed some light on just how much 
  of this is going on.  Why do we collect crime statistics?  After 
  all, we know there is lots of crime.  We need to know to fight it.
  
  Alan Lewis
  Private citizen