
Implications for Nursing Practice | 179
Existing accounting rules are enhanced under the HITECH Act, giving patients
the right to access their EHR and receive an accounting of all disclosures. Before
the HITECH Act, HIPAA regulations provided an exception to the accounting re-
quirements. Providers and other covered entities were not required to include in
the accounting any disclosures that were made to facilitate the treatment of pa-
tients, the payment for services, or the operations of the entity. This is commonly
known at the “TPO exception.” This exception ended in January 2011 for providers
that recently implemented new EHR systems. For those ...