Highlights 77th Texas Legislature - Senate

STATE AFFAIRS
Issues
FFAIRS/Public Information & Privacy
Medical Privacy Act - S.B. 11
by Senator Nelson, et al.
House Sponsors: Representative Gray, et al.
77 th Texas Legislature
Confidential health and medical data are now collected, analyzed, distributed, and accessed in large
quantities. The Senate Health Committee was charged with reviewing the type, amount, availability, and
use of patient-specific medical information, including prescription data, and current statutory and regulatory
provisions governing its availability.
Specifies that other Texas statutes with greater confidentiality provisions for the information made
confidential in this bill remain valid.
Specifies certain exceptions to the disclosure of protected health information for covered entities engaging
in financial activities financial institution.
Exempts the following activities and entities from being regulated by the provisions in the bill:
• a nonprofit agency that is primarily engaged in something other than a health-related business
activity from certain provisions when the nonprofit agency pays for health care services or
prescription drugs for an indigent person;
• workers’ compensation insurance;
• an employee benefit plan;
• any other covered entity or other person, insofar as the entity or person is acting in connection with
an employee benefit plan;
• the American Red Cross;
• state agencies disclosing, receiving, transferring, or exchanging medical and health information
and records relating individuals in the custody of an agency or in community supervision; and
• education records covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.
Requires covered entities to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) on
issues relating to:
• an individual’s access to the individual’s protected health information;
• uses and disclosures of protected health information, including requirement relating to consent;
and
• notice of privacy practices for protected health information.
Allows the disclosure of protected health information to a person performing health research, regardless of
the source of funding of the research, for the purpose of conducting health research, only if individual
consent, whether express or through waiver of consent, is acquired by the research entity.
Senate Research Center 283