Impact of the privacy rule on the study of out-of-hospital pediatric cardiac arrest.

Introduction. The Privacy Rule, a follow-up to the Health Insurance Portability andAccountability Act, limits distribution of protected health information. Compliance with the Privacy Rule is particularly challenging for prehospital research, because investigators often seek data from multiple emergency medical services (EMS) andreceiving hospitals. Objective. To describe the impact of the Privacy Rule on prehospital research andto present strategies to optimize data collection in compliance with the Privacy Rule. Methods. The CanAm Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Arrest Study Group has previously conducted a multicentered observational study involving children with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. In the current study, we used a survey to assess site-specific methods of compliance with the Privacy Rule andthe extent to which such strategies were successful. Results. The previously conducted observational study included collection of data from a total of 66 EMS agencies (range of 1–37 per site). Data collection ...