Why Healthcare Providers must prepare for granular Patient Consent

The sharing of protected health information (PHI) is inevitable and must be balanced against the patient’s right to privacy and desire for control, therefore, healthcare providers are compelled to understand industry privacy and consent drivers.

Why is granular consent management a necessity?

Due to the expansion of privacy laws, healthcare providers must balance legitimate consumer privacy concerns with the benefits of sharing personal health information.

Granular consent management enables individuals to establish specific privacy, access and usage directives beyond simple opt-in and opt-out affirmation.

The key challenge for healthcare organisations is to provide their patients with clarity and control over their personal health information. Granular patient consent is vital because it not only encourages transparency but builds long-lasting trust between a patient and their healthcare provider. If this trust isn’t respected, or if it’s broken, it could have legal consequences such as a breach in physician-patient privilege or even medical, life-threatening, consequences such as a misdiagnosis due to restricted data access.

How does HIPAA impact granular patient consent?

Patients have predominantly been in favour of healthcare providers managing their PHI. In fact, HIPAA rules and regulations have established a level of confidence in the privacy, security and integrity of the PHI under their control. However, patients’ preference expectations have evolved and they now demand that healthcare providers cater to their needs. 

As it stands, the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not require healthcare providers to obtain patient consent for treatment, payment and operations (TPO). Healthcare providers are free to use and disclose a patient’s PHI whether they provide consent or not.