HIPAA: an impediment to research

Ear, Nose & Throat Journal,  April, 2008  by Robert T. Sataloff

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which became effective on April 14, 2003, was intended to help ensure patient privacy and to increase patients' control of their personal health information. However, implementation has created numerous practical problems. Many of these drawbacks are familiar to clinicians who have had to deal with increased costs and decreased efficiency of patient care, without obvious benefit to patient safety or privacy. Economic consequences of HIPAA were recognized promptly after it was implemented. (1) However, in addition to clinical and economic consequences, the adverse effects of HIPAA upon research should not be underestimated. These effects are particularly troublesome because of difficulties created by HIPAA in performing research based upon review of medical records.

Although retrospective chart reviews do not have the cachet of blinded, randomized, prospective research, they have been an important component of our literature in the evolution of our specialty, and most other medical specialties. For generations, residents and clinicians have reviewed clinical data retrospectively to assess outcomes, identify areas of success and failure, seek opportunities for improvement, and define questions that warrant prospective, randomized, controlled studies. For most of the twentieth century, no institutional review board (IRB) approval was sought or expected for retrospective studies, especially since patients were not identified. More recently, most IRBs approved retrospective studies, waiving informed consent, or opined that IRB approval was unnecessary. Under HIPAA, however, a physician must obtain informed consent from each individual in order to review his or her health information and report it (even anonymously), or be able to demonstrate that it is "not practicable" to obtain informed consent. Understandably, many IRBs interpret "not practicable" extremely conservatively in order to protect themselves and their institutions from a stricter interpretation that might be made by federal auditors.

Adverse effects of this HIPAA provision have been noted by other writers. (2-4) Previous researchers have noted that applications for IRB approval have increased, but nearly 70% of the applicants fail to complete the IRB process because of the increased documentation requirements; and there has been a drop of approximately 25% in retrospective case research. (2)

While one might argue that there are potential benefits to this situation, they certainly seem to be overshadowed. The brightest "silver lining" to this regulatory cloud is the possibility that it may stimulate more prospective controlled research, since the IRB regulatory hurdles are nearly as imposing for a chart review as they are for a prospective invasive surgical study. Hence, one might theorize that if investigators have to jump through most of the same hoops anyway, perhaps they might proceed with the longer, more complex evidence-based study. However, although the theory sounds good, that is not the way it works in practice, especially for medical students and residents. Rather, this regulation impedes and stifles young researchers, and I suspect it discourages many who might otherwise have been academically productive.

Throughout my career, I have taught medical students and residents continuously. Like many of my colleagues, I believe that scholarly activity is essential to intellectually vital medical practice, and that writing and research are habits that should be developed early. I have always provided training and support for students' and residents' scholarly activities, and even third-year medical students have been informed that some scholarly activity is expected during their rotation if they wish to receive an "honors" grade. Until HIPAA, this encouragement led many students to start their first research projects and write their first papers, many of which were chart reviews. Moreover, many of them were scholarly and insightful, and they often led to clinical insights and additional research to improve patient care. Now, HIPAA has made such research virtually impossible unless projects are planned and IRB applications are filed months in advance of these students' rotations.

There is certainly no way that a student (even with substantial faculty help) can prepare the multiple complex forms required by an IRB, submit them, and have them reviewed, revised, resubmitted, and approved during a 3- or 4-week rotation. As a result, too many students simply give up on the idea of writing papers and do other things rather than dealing with HIPAA-imposed IRB bureaucracy.

While residents can be more productive because they have longer periods during which they can go through the process, they, too, are spending less time on retrospective reviews than they used to, and they do not appear to be compensating by doing more prospective, controlled studies. They are simply doing less research. It is almost hard to blame them. In some cases, the amount of time and writing involved in obtaining IRB approval exceeds that required for reviewing charts, collating data, and drafting a paper. This is especially true if the IRB requires that they obtain consent from each of the 50 or 100 or 200 patients whose charts they want to review.