We recently highlighted the debate between policymakers and healthcare providers over how best to provide patients with reports detailing who has accessed their health records.

Not surprisingly, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has an opinion on the matter, and it’s an approach that strikes us as nicely recognizing current technological realities while still pointing firmly to long-term ideals.

In a blog outlining comments CDT recently submitted to the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR), “CDT urged OCR to focus its proposed rule on what can be achieved in the short term, and to start building an achievable long term solution that benefits patients without overburdening health care organizations.”

The group voiced its optimism “that most of the technical barriers and policy issues raised by the proposed rule could be overcome in time,” but it “suggested that OCR alter the proposed rule to require covered entities to provide patients with the access logs they generate currently. If the covered entity does not have a means to combine the access logs from multiple systems into one report, then the covered entity should still turn over multiple access logs. This is not an ideal solution, especially given that raw access logs will not be readily understandable to many patients, but such a requirement would ease the bulk of the burden on covered entities and provide patients with at least some measure of transparency while OCR crafts a better solution.”

The group also urged policymakers to tap into the MU incentive program “to leverage technological innovation to establish better ways to provide patients with greater transparency regarding the sharing of their health information.”

From what we’ve seen, the only piece they may have missed concerns the percentage of patients who actually express an interest in viewing access reports. After all, the best incentive is still patient demand, so if policymakers really want providers to step up to the plate, they’ll work on educating the public about why patients should want to take steps to manage their health records proactively.

The more frequently the public asks, the greater the chances providers will figure out how to deliver.