Our healthcare system is in critical condition; its costs are out of control, and it's failing to keep us healthy. Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy and we spend twice as much per person to pay for a healthcare system whose results rank last of all industrialized nations.

Recent health legislation seeks to change all of this. A key component of health reform is a push towards ubiquitous electronic health records supported by nationwide health information exchange; paper systems can never solve these problems! Higher quality, lower cost healthcare can result only if we incorporate interoperable health information exchange and standardized, secure electronic communication of administrative and clinical transactions.

HIPAA started the ball rolling in this direction 15 years ago by requiring standards for administrative transactions, code sets, identifiers, security, and privacy. The HITECH Act (part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) put the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology into law and provided the incentives and support to roll out EHR systems and incorporate clinical information exchanges. It ramped up the HIPAA requirements for privacy and security and charged the Secretary of HHS to undertake "the development of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information and that ensures that each patient's health information is secure and protected." The Department of Health & Human Services also issued regulations requiring the adoption of updated versions of the transaction standards and the use of ICD-10 coding.

Last year Congress passed healthcare reform legislation in the form of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which includes requirements to push the industry even further in this direction. HHS is producing volumes of regulations on privacy, security and electronic health records. Just when we thought that HIPAA had settled in, it is off and running again! These developments will affect most aspects of healthcare and everyone connected professionally with healthcare will want to understand these changes and what will be required.

All of these developments create substantial HIPAA compliance challenges for covered entities and their business associates. Hospitals, physician organizations and other covered entities still must implement, update and train their workforces regarding institution-specific policies and procedures. New challenges relating to accounting for disclosures and anticipated privacy and security audits must be dealt with in the short term.

The HIPAA Summit will provide the most up-to-date information on the status and schedule for the regulations through presentations by the leading regulators from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Office for Civil Rights, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Private sector leaders will add practical advice from their experiences in implementation. This Summit will cover privacy and security, legal issues, and electronic health record adoption issues, as well as developments and requirements for transactions and code sets. It will also include training sessions for HIPAA privacy and security professionals who wish to apply for certification.