Small-scale breaches of patients' medical privacy are going unpunished because officials at the federal office for Civil Rights focus on voluntary compliance as the remedy, ProPublica's Charles Ornstein reports. Many people also cannot turn to their own lawsuits for redress. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act doesn't allow for a private cause of action, and states vary on how much protection tort law provides for medical privacy.
Indiana courts have ruled that healthcare providers are liable for employees who snoop in medical records, but courts in Ohio, Minnesota and New York, as well as other states, have rejected those types of claims, Ornstein reports.
Small-scale breaches of medical privacy can cause the most harm, Ornstein reports. For example, an employee at a New Jersey hospital disclosed that an 11-year-old boy had attempted suicde. The revelation caused him to be bullied at his school, Ornstein reports. In another example, a dental assistant had a former friend post on Facebook that she had the STD human papillomavirus.
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