Imaginary Barriers: How HIPAA Promotes Bidirectional Patient Data Exchange With EMS

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NEMSIS Statement:

EMS agencies nationwide still widely report that hospitals and other healthcare providers refuse to share patient information with them, citing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) concerns.  Misconceptions about HIPAA create artificial barriers to legitimate, approved bidirectional data exchange between EMS and other providers.  As a result, many healthcare systems are missing a critical opportunity to improve patient outcomes and advance evidence-based practices in prehospital care.

To conclusively answer this question, the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) Technical Assistance Center (TAC) collaborated with Page, Wolfberg & Wirth to provide an expert legal opinion regarding the bidirectional sharing of patient information between Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and other healthcare providers.

Imaginary Barriers: How HIPAA Promotes Bidirectional Patient Data Exchange With Emergency Medical Services provides evidence, precedence, and legal opinion to help educate and encourage healthcare providers to appropriately share patient information with EMS.  This paper addresses why HIPAA does not restrict, and how the law promotes, bidirectional sharing of patient information between hospitals and EMS agencies. Please access the PDF here: https://nemsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/HIPAA_An-Imaginary-Barrier-to-Data-Exchange.pdf

Please feel free to share this document with any EMS or hospital stakeholder that may benefit from the information. You are also welcome to share the document (in its original form) or the link on your website, newsletters, message boards, or social media platforms.

For questions, please contact Dr. Clay Mann, clay.mann@utah.edu, NEMSIS TAC or Eric Chaney, eric.chaney@dot.gov, NHTSA OEMS.