Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information
Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information

Author: Erika McCallister

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 2010-09

Total Pages: 59

ISBN-13: 1437934889

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The escalation of security breaches involving personally identifiable information (PII) has contributed to the loss of millions of records over the past few years. Breaches involving PII are hazardous to both individuals and org. Individual harms may include identity theft, embarrassment, or blackmail. Organ. harms may include a loss of public trust, legal liability, or remediation costs. To protect the confidentiality of PII, org. should use a risk-based approach. This report provides guidelines for a risk-based approach to protecting the confidentiality of PII. The recommend. here are intended primarily for U.S. Fed. gov¿t. agencies and those who conduct business on behalf of the agencies, but other org. may find portions of the publication useful.

Finding What Works in Health Care
Finding What Works in Health Care

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2011-07-20

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0309164257

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.

Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes
Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes

Author: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality/AHRQ

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1587634333

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.