A number of organizations that may impact the legislative process. Two of these

A number of organizations that may impact the legislative process. Two of these are Blue Cross and Blue Shield and AARP. What are your thoughts on the appropriateness of organizations such as these having an impact on the process? What value do they bring to the process? Or should this type of intervention not be allowed?
2 = Many professional associations work to advance their own policy agendas. One such example is the American Public Health Association http://www.apha.org/advocacy/. As discussed in this chapter, problems lead to the search for solutions. These solutions are many times manifested in the formulation of policy agendas. Locate a policy agenda for two professional healthcare organizations, such as the AMA, AHA, AHIMA, etc. Discuss the types of items that are on their policy agenda. What types of actions do they suggest or support? Who is the intended audience? What are your observations of the way the agenda is presented? Submit a one to two page (double-spaced) summary of your findings.
3 = There has been a great deal of discussion on the type of consent needed by the patient in order to exchange personal health information. The issue is a complicated one, as patients may want to share data with some healthcare providers but may not want to share all information with all providers. The terms opt-in and opt-out are commonly used to describe the environment in which consent may be given for the information exchange. Information on these models, as well as others, may be found in the whitepaper regarding consent models in the Module 5 Resources. Generally, an opt-in model would assume that patients did not authorize the exchange unless they expressly signed a consent to participate. Adversely, opt-out would assume they are participating unless they consent to not have their information shared. While this is a simplistic view and there are alternatives of each type, it brings up a good debate. Which model would you feel is the model of choice to exchange health information?
4 = Review the information on DURSA in the resources section of this module. Provide a critique (double-spaced, Arial 12 font, cover and reference pages using APA 7th Edition formatting rules) of these documents. Do you feel it adequately addresses the areas of privacy and security with respect to the exchange of personally identifiable health information? Are there areas you feel should be in more depth? Items that are unnecessary? Who would execute a DURSA document? At what level would this be beneficial – facility, enterprise, state exchange, national exchange?