If you feel that your medial health information is kept and well protected then you are quite wrong as there is big possibility despite HIPAA being in force there are chances of information being freely flowing on Internet between public health officials, health care providers, insurance and data clearing house companies and others without your permission. So this is the best time to learn about federal health privacy law.
While visiting a health care provider in America you receive a form with a title such as “Notification of Privacy Rights” assuming information not is shared with any of the third party. However, neither the federal law nor form provides any grantee against proliferation of the information.
Instead privacy rule recognized under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) legally allows health care providers to distribute patients’ information with more than 600,000 health- and data-related entities – without a patient’s assent. Nor that is clearly explained in the notification form. The HIPAA notification does not have any control over information and it is merely formality just to tell who can access your information.
Therefore, the demand for strengthening privacy rule is raised by physicians and health care providers as HIPAA has failed to give complete assessment of the situation and confidentiality in terms of the health care records security.
“HIPAA allows the routine release of personal health information without patient consent or knowledge, and even over a patient’s objection…” told Dr. Janis G. Chester, president of the American Association of Practicing Psychiatrists. Therefore a voice is rising in favor of health Internet Technology (HIT) bill to be considered in Congress.
If the medical data is not protected then there can be very serious consequences as making personal health information a salable commodity in the market place. The other bad aspect of lack of security in HIPAA is strained relations between doctors and patients. As there are cases reported when patient did not share their complete medical information with their physicians as they feel their privacy will get breached on the pretext of efficiency. Further more due to lack of privacy rule they even can not protect themselves from bad, stolen, lost and misused data.
