I was wondering what other health care organizations are doing in relations to the Stimulus currently going through Congress.

If you haven't already heard about it, the Stimulus package passed by the House redefines fundraising as NOT a part of healthcare operations. This would effectively prevent any access to patient demographics currently allowed under HIPAA without written authorization from the patient.

We're mobilizing our boards and government relations folks to reach out to our legislators. We're also trying to coordinate with AHP and AFP for efforts from that end.

Mitch Gibbs
VP, Advancement Services
Advocate Charitable Foundation

We sent a letter from our board to our State representative. Are you part of AHP?

 This just came out from them:

We have good news!

The Conference Committee has just posted their report with the final language of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly called "the stimulus package."

AHP made an initial review of the bill, and the outcome is good for health care philanthropy. The language of concern in the original House version of H.R.1, which would have denied hospital fundraisers access to grateful patient names and addresses, has been removed.

The Conference Committee, in a new section titled, Opportunity to Opt Out of Fundraising, included language that will strengthen the opt out requirements regarding written communications to grateful patients and their families. This language is consistent with the existing HIPAA requirements. In a separate section of the legislation, the Committee also included language that increases the penalties for HIPAA violators.

AHP is reviewing the final legislation with legal counsel and will provide further insight when the review is completed. 

The efforts of AHP and our members have been a great success. Thank you to all who have supported our profession as we fought this important issue.

Very truly yours,

William C. McGinly, Ph.D., CAE

President and Chief Executive Officer
Association for Healthcare Philanthropy

Hi this is kevin from Manhattan.

I think this is one of the main forum to discuss the general things . those who wanted to know some thing

about this forum for them this may help a lot.

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kevin.

hipaa