Review reporting, recordkeeping, and other requirements to reduce burdens
Streamlining and standardizing data collection for federal HIV programs
Consistent with the Implementation Plan of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy released last summer, HHS, through its Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, will convene a working group to consider recommendations for streamlining data collection requirements. To begin, HHS, together with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of Management and Budget, will consult with state and local health officials and consider changes to lessen grantee reporting burdens. Preliminary conversations with key stakeholders, i.e. the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, local health officials, local service providers, and advocates, have taken place regarding the burden of the grant making process, consideration of data sets that have application across several HHS agencies and offices (and potentially across federal departments) that may be aggregated and shared to decrease the repetitious development of similar data for often the same intent. HHS plans to have a draft proposal developed by the end of calendar year 2011.
Revisions to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Privacy Rule
OCR is undertaking a number of revisions to the HIPAA Privacy Rule to reduce burden and increase flexibility, while maintaining or strengthening important privacy rights for individuals with respect to their health information. This includes a change to facilitate the disclosure of student immunization records to schools, which will reduce paperwork burden on both parents and health care providers, and help avoid delays in children beginning school. OCR has also proposed changes that would ease burdens on health plans associated with distributing notices of privacy practices, which could save health plans a total of up to 2,000,000 burden hours and $120,000,000, while still ensuring that beneficiaries continue to receive timely notice of material changes to such privacy practices. In addition, in collaboration with CMS, changes are being considered to remove impediments to the ability of individuals to access their own health information held by laboratories.
Reduce ACF Reporting Requirements
ACF is undertaking several initiatives to reduce administrative burdens; reflect improvements in data collection and reporting; and improve consistency with authorizing statutes. Among those are plans to revisit the regulations applicable to the Developmental Disabilities Program in order to provide greater administrative flexibility and improve data collection and reporting and to delete the requirement of quarterly financial reports for Social Services grants.
Eliminate Requirement for Actuarial Reporting for Hospital Pension Costs
CMS has finalized in the Inpatient Prospective Payment System rule for 2012 to eliminate the requirement that Hospitals rely on an actuarial determination to report their pension costs. This revision will relieve hospitals of an unnecessary and burdensome reporting requirement. CMS estimates that hospitals will save $375,000 annually.
