Andrea Smith, a clinic nurse, accessed the unnamed patient's medical file and shared the contents with her husband. He later told the patient he planned to use the private information in an upcoming legal proceeding,

Quoted: "It's now clear that there is a willingness [by the government] to prosecute when individuals are using [protected health information] for personal benefit, whether financial or otherwise." Still, legal experts warn of state civil liabilities for physician practices in such situations.

The Arkansas case is believed to be only the fourth criminal case brought under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (since its medical records privacy rules went into effect in 2003)

Quoted: Dossia, Google, Intuit, Microsoft, WebMD, AARP, America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians - among other healthcare stakeholders - are endorsing the Connecting for Health framework created by the Markle Foundation's public-private collaboration.

Quoted: $2.90 an hour - that's how much Scottie Marable spends on health coverage for each employee in her small Bellevue firm.

Average costs for insuring single employees have risen 32 percent -- an average $114 a month -- since 2005. More than a quarter of Washington businesses say they will drop their health-insurance policies if costs go up 15 percent more, according to an AARP survey being released today.

Quoted: California health insurance providers were raking in more than $4.3 billion in profits in the last year. In addition, HMOs spent $6 billion on administrative costs according to a report by the California Medical Association.

There were two themes I heard repeatedly at the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) conference in San Francisco last week:

1. Consumer-directed healthcare (CDH) is more than shifting health costs onto members; it is a way to put consumers in charge of their healthcare and provide them with the tools to make educated decisions.

2. Creating personal health record (PHR) portals is not enough. Consumers have not shown much interest in PHRs because the portals are used simply as a place to dump information rather than interactive tools for members to become more informed.

Quoted: That's really where health plans need to go—to go where the consumer goes. Millions of Americans don't stay up-to-date with their personal financial records like balancing checkbooks...You must give them a compelling reason.

The solution is to offer them valuable information that interests a member's specific needs and find out how and by what means to best reach that individual. Simply transferring costs on members and uploading a PHR onto a Web site doesn't cut it.

Quoted: Health care providers can use American Wells new online platform to conduct real-time online or phone consultations with patients. The online service allows physicians to access patient information, prescribe medications and suggest follow-up care.

Quoted: Personal health record advocates tout the technology's ability to eliminate redundant tests and reduce errors, but some privacy experts warn that there are no laws to prevent PHR companies from selling patients data to pharmaceutical or insurance companies.

In the realm of health IT, Wal-Mart Stores is aiming far beyond its participation in the Dossia personal health records (PHR) project. The Bentonville, Ark., retail behemoth seeks to become a catalyst for interoperability by paying attention to customer convenience. Wal-Mart already has made clear its intent to open 400 in-store health clinics by 2010, up from the current 70.

Quoted: "These clinics are like Trojan horses," John Agwunobi, president of Wal-Mart health and wellness business unit, said here Monday in a keynote address to the midyear Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Summit. He said an electronic health record (EHR) not only will link all 400 clinics, it will serve as a main source of data for the Dossia PHR for Wal-Mart' s 2 million U.S. employees.

Quoted: "More importantly, our vision is that your electronic health record will connect electronically with your own medical home," Agwunobi said at this small, focused meeting that is the polar opposite of the mammoth wintertime HIMSS annual conference. According to Agwunobi, 55 percent of patients who visit Wal-Mart clinics lack health insurance. " This interaction with our clinic is how they find medical homes," he said. Above all, health care must engage consumers, said Agwunobi, a pediatrician who is a former assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services and an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. " We think we can do that with the personal health record," he said. Wal-Mart' s goal is to provide a " robust" PHR to its U.S. workforce employees by 2010.

Could the cell phone succeed where grand plans for regional health information organizations (RHIOs) so far have failed? Could it be the format that convinces millions of consumers to adopt and maintain personal health records (PHRs) after smart cards, USB drives, and Web sites have elicited a profound yawn from the public? The Medical Records Institute thinks so.

Quoted: "By itself, I think it' s going to be the biggest change in the last 10 years," chief executive C. Peter Waegemann said before the opening of Towards the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR), the Boston-based organization' s annual conference.

Waegemann unveiled the TEPR Cell Phone Project, an eight-month effort to prove the worth of the humble handset as a conduit of interoperability in health care.

Quoted: "In the next year, I believe more than 10 million patients will have a PHR on cell phones, safe and secure," Waegemann boldly forecast. " This by itself could be a major revolution."

Using the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard, originally championed by the Medical Records Institute (MRI) and now recognized by ASTM International, the Cell Phone Project will attempt to demonstrate how consumers can use their phones to transfer confidential medical and insurance data between health care providers, with access controlled only by patients themselves.