ONC Releases Draft Revisions to Requirements on Consumer Preferences

The Consumer Preferences Requirements Document describes a framework for the electronic exchange among multiple stakeholders of the preferences consumers may have regarding the management of and controlling access to their information and potentially sensitive health information (SHI) utilizing standard message formats, terminologies and data sets.

The Draft Consumer Preferences Draft Requirements Document is available for public feedback. If you would like to provide feedback about this document, please provide your organization’s information. Suggestions for providing your feedback are listed below.

1. Whenever possible, identify the specific section of the document to which your feedback refers.
   • Example A:
     • 2.1 - Progress to Date
     • 6.4, 6.10 - Event: Request Preference Action
2. Please save your document using a naming convention of the form: YYYY.MM.DD_OrganizationName_ConPrefFeedback.doc
   • Example B:
     • 2007.04.25_ABCOrganization_ConPrefFeedback.doc.
3. Email this document to ois-requirements@hhs.gov by the close of business on Friday, October 16th, 2009.
4. You will receive an acknowledgement email confirming that ONC has received your feedback. A disposition report will be made available upon request.

You will receive an acknowledgement email confirming that ONC has received your feedback. A disposition report will be made available upon request.
Please note that submissions should not contain any proprietary or private information as they may be made available for public inspection

The electronic exchange of consumer preferences is an integral step on the path towards enhanced privacy, security and public trust in the exchange of health information.

For the purposes of this document, the term “consumer preferences” is used to collectively represent several interrelated capabilities including, but not limited to:

• the ability for a consumer to define permissions for who is permitted to access information in their electronic health record (EHR) and under what circumstances this access is appropriate,
• the ability for consumers to express preferences regarding how and under what circumstances their health information should or should not be made available to others by their healthcare providers;
• the ability for consumers to authorize the release of their health information to another provider or third party; and
• the ability to establish various types of consumer preferences including but not limited to consents, advance directives and other potential types outlined in Section 9.0, Data Set Considerations

The purpose of this document is to support the ONC Strategic Plan and the national HIT agenda related to standards development and harmonization process by describing business processes, information exchanges, stakeholders, functional requirements, issues and policy implications involving consumer preferences.