Employers are embracing the use of activity trackers and adopting wellness programs in an effort to monitor employee health in the hope of reducing health care costs, The Wall Street Journal reports. Joy Pritts, who served as the chief privacy officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services until 2014, explained that while wellness programs offered as part of group health plans are covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, others are not. “There’s just too many different data sources and too many nuances about when the data is covered [by privacy laws] and when it’s not. It makes it impossible for the individual to figure out when their information is protected,” Pritts said. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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