Unidentified work‑group lead said the group will advise the state on a feasibility study required by House Bill 20 four‑twelve 17, a measure directing the Behavioral Health Administration to create a friends‑and‑family consent form and the Office of Health Information (OHI) to study a digital consent repository for Colorado. "We are basically having the opportunity to have the state to be interested in our work," the meeting lead said, urging members to focus on Colorado‑specific realities rather than proposing a finished system.

Tiffany Sailor, Denver Health’s interoperability lead, described current practices at large health systems, where patients are often "opted in by default" to national exchange frameworks and consent is embedded in treatment forms. "A lot of us take the approach that patients are opted in by default to those exchanges," she said, noting that hospitals already use query systems such as Patient Care 360 and eHealth Exchange to access records for treatment purposes.

Work‑group members raised several substantive implementation questions the research firm is expected to study. Jane Wilson, privacy officer at the state Medicaid agency, asked whether the repository would store only consent records or also hold medical data. "The repository would hold, obviously, all the consents that you've obtained. Also, will it also hold the medical data itself, the records?" she asked; the presenter said the immediate intent is to store consents but the firm should examine how the repository could facilitate exchange with EHRs and HIEs.

Participants also flagged use cases beyond emergency department queries. Erin Kreitz, a policy adviser in the Office of Research and Statistics, asked the group to consider behavioral‑health crisis responses, crisis teams and EMS contacts, and how consent works in custodial or justice‑involved settings. The lead acknowledged that consent obtained in jails or custodial environments raises distinct coercion and usability concerns and said the work group should consider whether justice‑involved populations need special safeguards.

Technical and governance questions surfaced repeatedly. A participant identified as Justin asked how the repository would match a consent to the correct patient record and whether agencies such as BHA would be obligated to implement a master patient index. Jane Wilson recommended considering whether the repository, if created, would be a HIPAA‑covered entity; she noted that operating outside HIPAA could be a simpler pathway, but that decision has legal and operational tradeoffs.

Members discussed stakeholder representation and equity. Speakers urged adding practicing providers, provider legal counsel and rural organizations to the work group to ensure perspectives from front‑line clinicians and smaller systems are included; the lead agreed and asked participants to recommend providers and contacts. Tiffany and others pointed the group to national work such as the Sequoia Project and TEFCA consent efforts that will publish guidance early next year and offered to share relevant white papers and discovery scans.

Transparency and patient control were highlighted as design priorities. Yolanda from the Colorado Department of Public Safety asked whether the repository could show who or which agency accessed a patient’s data so individuals could see access logs; the presenter said auditability and granular consent (who accessed what and when, and the ability to revoke sharing) are potential recommendations to include in the study.

The work group plans to contract a research firm beginning in January 2025 and receive an initial Colorado‑specific scan and presentation in February 2025. The firm will review national examples and produce monthly topic briefs for the group to critique; the presenter asked members to submit papers, white papers or contacts to inform that research. The meeting closed with a request that questions and suggested participants be sent to Bianca Molossa (project coordinator) or Tiffany Sailor.

The study is advisory: the research firm will recommend options and the work group will advise the Legislature and state committees, but no technical product will be built by the group as part of this contract.