|
How Will the Internet Change Our Health System
|
| bet | 5/15 | | Sana | 19.03.2017 | | Hajmi | 62,5 Kb. | | #217 |
| Protecting privacy. The other challenge is standardizing patient identification while protecting privacy. This standardization is the essential first step in creating an enterprise health information system; it enables a hospital or group practice to consolidate a dozen or more records on the same patient into one record. Standardizing patient identification across health institutions is the vital step needed to create an Internet based patient record. However, placing the medical record on the Internet exposes that record, already too accessible in paper form, to potential unauthorized access by employers, health plans, law enforcement agencies, private investigators, hackers, and others.
In the Kassenbaum Kennedy Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, Congress mandated that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) develop a unique health identifier for each individual, employer, health plan, and provider and promulgate guidelines for protecting the confidentiality of personal medical information.
When HHS issued draft guidelines recommending the adoption of a unique patient identifier in the summer of 1998, the ensuing firestorm of public criticism took the policy community by surprise. Lack of public confidence in public and private institutions' ability to prevent health information from being disclosed to employers, the courts, and law enforcement agencies, or to protect consumers from inappropriate use by health care providers themselves, was a major theme in opposition to the unique identifier.
Janlori Goldman recently reported that 27 percent of respondents to a Louis Harris poll believed that their personal medical information had been improperly disclosed. Of this group, more than 30 percent felt that they had been adversely affected by the disclosure.7 Significant numbers of Americans pay for health care outside of insurance plans or simply avoid seeking care for sensitive problems to avoid creating a record of the problem.
The barriers to protecting medical privacy on the Internet are not technological, but rather political. Properly employed, heavy encryption and password driven access can do the job. The real problem is a lack of public trust.
|
| |
