Newsbriefs


New Brochure Shows Practitioners How to Perform Self-Query

The Data Banks recently created an instructional brochure entitled The Practitioner’s Guide to the Data Banks. The brochure providers information about the Data Banks and shows practitioners, in step-by-step detail, how to perform a self-query.

Entities: Please reference the brochure when instructing practitioners how to obtain a self-query.

Call the Customer Service Center at 1-800-767-6732 to obtain copies of this brochure, or direct practitioners to the Portable Document Format (PDF) version of the brochure, available for downloading and printing on-line at www.npdb-hipdb.com/welcomesq.html.

West Nile Virus in Iowa

Sarah M. Brend, MPH, the West Nile virus contact within the Center for Acute Disease Epidemiology at the State Health Department created a 2004 West Nile virus Newsletter for Iowa healthcare providers. The majority of human cases in Iowa occur in August and September. You can secure a copy of the West Nile Virus Newsletter for Iowa which will outline information about the clinical epidemiology and testing guidelines for the disease. www.idph.state.ia.us/adper/common/pdf/newsletter_summer2004.pdf or call Sarah at 242-5114.


New HIPAA Privacy Rule Listserve

The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is responsible for implementation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, has announced the creation of a listserve to distribute announcements, notices of available resources, and other educational information about the HIPAA Privacy Rule. We encourage you to take advantage of this new opportunity and register for this tool to receive up-to-date information from OCR. To subscribe, please follow the attached link, or cut and paste the following URL address into your browser window. http://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=ocr-privacy-list&A=1 or you may go to go to http://list.nih.gov/ and under browse, select OCR-PRIVACY-LIST. These instructions can also be found on the OCR website at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/listserv.html.

OCR also invites you to visit its website, www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/, where a wide range of helpful guidance and technical assistance materials about the Privacy Rule as well as civil rights are available. OCR continues to add materials to this site.


Medicare to Update Vaccine Payments in September

Payments for adult immunizations were exempted from the drug price reductions included in the Medicare Modernization Act. However, concern arose in the public health community due to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) memo that suggested vaccine payment rates would not be updated until 2005. In response to AMA advocacy on the need to update flu and pneumonia vaccine payments before physicians start immunizing patients in the fall, CMS has decided to update payments for both vaccines in September.