patient privacy

The New York Court of Appeals has ruled that a patient's family can continue their privacy lawsuit because the patient's death was filmed without their permission and aired on medical show, ProPublica's Charles Ornstein reports. The court greenlighted the plaintiffs' claim that doctor-patient confidentiality was breached, but the court rejected the plaintiffs' intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.

“'We conclude that defendants’ conduct here, while offensive, was not so atrocious and utterly intolerable as to support a cause of action'” for emotional distress, the court opined.

The widow of Mark Chanko recognized her husband moaning in pain on an episode of "NY Med." He was treated at New York Presbyterian Hospital after being struck by a vehicle while crossing the street.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that health officials must provide more information about the citations given to facilities found to be lax in treating developmentally and mentally ill people, Sacramento Bee's Denny Walsh reports. The unanimous court ruled that the state Department of Public Health provided too little information in response to a public-records request about citations issued against the seven largest state-owned-and-operated treatment facilities, Walsh further reports. The DOH argued that another law required heavy redactions in order to protect the privacy of the patients, but the Supreme Court ruled that the state Long-Term Act was a special exception.

Medical Economics reports that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is hindering the ability of healthcare providers to coordinate care, including with patients who want family and friends to have access to their health records: "According to a report in the January 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), privacy and security regulations aren’t keeping up with the convergence of technology and an increased emphasis on care coordination." 

FierceEMR reports that consolidation and new business relationships between healthcare providers will create issues regarding patient privacy and electronic health records, according to two healthcare attorneys interviewed by the blog.

Health law attorneys Michael Kline and Elizabeth Litten with Fox Rothschild in Princeton, N.J., told FierceEMR that the issues could include:

a. the expansion of health care entities "increases the risk of breach of the data as the octupus grows";

b. fights over who gets the patient, including if it means that the entity that controls the health care records is in control of the patient.

The Wall Street Journal reports that research by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee found that data brokers are maintaining health records as part of their massive data collection: "Marketers maintain databases that purport to track and sell the names of people who have diabetes, depression, and osteoporosis, as well as how often women visit a gynecologist."

There is little oversight of data brokers, including from the subjects of the data collection; we don't have the right to find out what type of data is collected about us or who buys the information about us.

"An industry which began in the 1970s collecting data from public records to help marketers send direct mail has become an engine of a global $120 billion digital-advertising industry, helping marketers deliver increasingly targeted ads across the web and on mobile phones," The Journal also reports.

The ACLU has raised concerns that the Alaskan Health Information Exchange for sharing electronic health records is not secure against hackers and governemental intrusion by the NSA. For example, the ACLU opined: "Let’s be clear: electronic medical records can be a good thing. They can improve our health and make it easier for doctors to care for us. But a medical exchange that isn’t secure against spies and hackers is bad for Alaskans." The full OP/ED can be read here: http://m.newsminer.com/opinion/community_perspectives/risky-electronic-h...

But healthcare providers hit back, arguing the exchange is secure and that penalties for not ensuring patient privacy are high.