Medical privacy
[4] In 1996, the United States passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which aimed to increase privacy precautions within medical institutions.
Research indicates that storing information on paper is safer because it is more difficult to physically steal, whereas digital records are vulnerable to hacker access.
[6] This "smart" card included an individual's social security number as an important piece of identification that can lead to identity theft if databases are breached.
[6] Additionally, there was the fear that people would target these medical cards because they have information that can be of value to many different third parties, including employers, pharmaceutical companies, drug marketers, and insurance reviewers.
[1] Additionally, it is used to ensure that a person's identity is kept confidential for research or statistical purposes and to understand the process to make individuals aware that their health information is being used.
[2] Researchers have found that U.S. state legislation and regulation of medical privacy laws reduce the number of hospitals that adopt EMR by more than 24%.
With decreasing numbers of medical institutions adopting the EMR filing system, the U.S. government's plan of a national health network has not been fully recognized.
[2] The national network will ultimately cost US$156 billion in investments, yet in order for this to happen, the U.S. government needs to place a higher emphasis on protecting individual privacy.
Senators Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton supported this observation, stating "[patients] need...information, including access to their own health records... At the same time, we must ensure the privacy of the systems, or they will undermine the trust they are designed to create".
A 2005 report by the California Health Care Foundation found that "67 percent of national respondents felt 'somewhat' or 'very concerned' about the privacy of their personal medical records".
Some of these security and privacy threats include hackers, viruses, worms, and the unintended consequences of the speed at which patients are expected to have their records disclosed while frequently containing sensitive terms that carry the risk of accidental disclosure.
[11] Within Glover v Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation, an employee sued her employer against violating her 4th amendment rights because of unnecessary HIV testing.
[12] Privacy merchants target health insurance companies because, nowadays, they collect huge amounts of personal information and keep them in large databases.
Project Nightingale, a joint effort between Google and the healthcare network Ascension, saw to the selling of millions of patients' identifiable medical information without their consent.
[16] Medical privacy is not a new issue within the insurance industry, yet the problems regarding exploitation continue to reoccur; there is more focus on taking advantage of the business environment for personal gain.
[16] In 2001, President George W. Bush passed additional regulations to HIPAA in order to better protect the privacy of individual medical information.
This creates a need for extra government intervention to enforce legislation and new standards to decrease the number of threats against an individual's privacy of health data.
The statement covers measures in place to protect personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorized access, modification, and disclosure.
Results listed that 49.1% of Australian patients stated they have withheld or would withhold information from their health care provider based on privacy concerns.
Also perceived as problematic, is the potential for parties other than health care practitioners, such as insurance companies, employers, police or the government, to use information in a way which could result in discrimination or disadvantage.
[36] Security experts have questioned the registration process, where those registering only have to provide a Medicare card number, and names and birth dates of family members to verify their identity.
In addition to the regulatory bodies of specific healthcare workers, the provincial privacy commissions are central to the protection of patient information.
Newspapers feature stories about lost computers and memory sticks but a more common and longstanding problem is about staff accessing records that they have no right to see.
NHS Wales has created the National Intelligent Integrated Audit System which provides "a range of automatically generated reports, designed to meet the needs of our local health boards and trusts, instantly identifying any potential issues when access has not been legitimate".
[40] Since 1974, numerous federal laws have been passed in the United States to specify the privacy rights and protections of patients, physicians, and other covered entities to medical data.
The most comprehensive law passed is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which was later revised after the Final Omnibus Rule in 2013.
This rule also expanded HIPAA by broadening the definition of business associates to include any entity that sends or accesses PHI such as health IT vendors.
It included the following goals: to protect individual medical information by providing secure access and control of their own information, improving healthcare quality by creating a more trust between consumers and their healthcare providers and third party organizations, and improve the efficiency of the medical system through new rules and regulations put forth by the local governments, individuals, and organizations.
More specifically, CMIA prohibits providers, contractors and health care service plans from disclosing PHI without prior authorization.
In addition, keeping data secret for a competitive advantage also poses multiple concerns, potentially slowing advances in medical testing (e.g.
