Yawners

[gfish]

Hi. I'm up late working to defend Seattle against bioterrorism (and help hospitals meet the April 14 HIPAA compliance deadline in the process).

I want to invent an LJ meme. This is probably a really pathetic thing to want. But I still want to.

I still need to repair/finish xiadyn's loom. And then deliver it to her in Portland.

I still need to get renter's insurance. But I've put it off for almost three years at this point. Another two months and I can just join vixyish's policy as her husband.

I need to start practicing guitar regularly for Norwescon.

How about a 'list your todo list' meme? So far it kinda sucks. I'll keep thinking.

Comments

[xiadyn.livejournal.com]

My to-do list is pretty boring too. Get some work done, go to the grocery store, laundry, and call the insurance people to yell at them, which I've been putting off because I'm really not looking forward to it.
Could you expand HIPAA? I keep hearing people mention it, but I'm not sure what it is.
And I was starting to wonder if you'd forgotten about the loom. :)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

What is HIPAA? (http://www.hipaadvisory.com/regs/HIPAAprimer1.htm)

It started as a bill to let employees keep their healthcare plans when they switch jobs. But, in that wonderful congressional way, it also had the Administrative Simplification rules added. Administrative Simplification is a process for complicating administration by requiring lots of (fairly sensible) privacy and security restrictions on healthcare data. On April 14 they go live, and very few large healthcare providers are going to be ready. Specifically, they need to be able to notify patients whenever their information was released for mandatory public health reporting. I'm not sure why this is so hard, since we're throwing something together that can do it (and monitor the county for bioterrorism at the same time!) in a few weeks. But it isn't the first time I've wondered something like that.

And, yes, the loom is sitting on my workbench, constantly glaring at me reproachfully.

[xiadyn.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to believe that everything is over-complicated in healthcare. Insurance, mandatory reporting, whatever, it's all the same bureaucratic mess.
I'm also kind of curious what you guys actually do with that bioterrorism data (you're still just working on the King County part of it, yes?), since I have yet to hear anything about analysis...

[gfish.livejournal.com]

We don't do anything with it, actually. We just collect it from the various hospitals/clinics and provide a way for the King County person who runs the analysis to get the combined data from us. I don't know anything about that end of things, other than she uses other data sources as well. Morgue, nurse hotline, pharmacy dispensing, that kind of stuff. Bryant is working on getting Kitsap county data as well, but you probably know as much about that as I do.