Digital files raise healthcare security concerns

Jun 27, 2006 4:29 PM

           

Hospitals and doctors are shifting more patient records to computer files, but no one has settled how the nation should safeguard the sensitive information once it is transformed into bits and bytes, according to consumer healthcare advocates gathered in Boston.

The lack of uniform privacy standards is becoming a problem, they say, as communities in Massachusetts and around the country experiment with ways to share electronic records between providers.

"We're in totally uncharted terrain," John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, tells The Boston Globe. McDonough's nonprofit consumer organization sponsored the Boston forum on health records.

Unanswered questions in the digital files sharing arena include:

Should data shared in these networks be made available to insurance companies, health researchers or drug companies?

What level of control should patients have over who views their records? Should patients be allowed to view their own records from home? And how should hospitals and doctors respond after a security breach?

The federal government established a panel to study these issues last year under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, the Globe reports, but it has yet to produce recommendations.

Not only are consumers worried about the theft or misuse of records, but their privacy rights may prove to be different from state to state and city to city unless there are uniform protections, says David Lansky, a senior director at the nonprofit Markle Foundation in New York, which studies the impact of technology on society.

The forum focused on efforts around the country to encourage the use of electronic records. Speakers at the forum said patients should pay more attention to consent forms they sign at physicians' offices, which spell out with whom their medical information can be shared.

But reading the forms is one thing, and making decisions based on what they say, and their legal implications, is another. The eHealth Collaborative has hired an expert to help translate the legalese in consent forms into something patients can understand.


Read more about healthcare security in the June issue of ACCESS CONTROL & SECURITY SYSTEMS

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