Susan Heavey reports: A Democratic proposal to ban the collection of doctors’ prescription records for marketing purposes is unlikely to be included as part of the Senate’s overall health reform bill, a Senate staff member said on Monday. A member of the staff of Senator Herb Kohl, a main sponsor of the amendment, said the…
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AU: Doctors can tell patients' relatives of genetic disorder
Mark Metherell reports: Doctors will be able to override the wishes of a patient and inform blood relatives – but not the patient’s spouse – of the patient’s genetic disorder where there is a risk to the relative’s health, under guidelines introduced yesterday. The new guidelines, announced by federal health and privacy authorities, which take…
Patient consent and 'granular' privacy control ties
In Part 2 of a 2-part series, Joseph Conn reports: The online culture is changing, shifting toward affording individuals more control over their personal information, as evidenced by the rollout last week of revisions to the privacy and security policies and technological framework by Facebook, a popular personal media site. Privacy and IT industry experts…
A prescription for snooping
Andrew Zajac reports: When your doctor writes you a prescription, that’s just between you, your doctor and maybe your health insurance company — right? Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are looking over the doctor’s shoulder to keep track of how many prescriptions for each drug the physician…
EPIC Supports Privacy Safeguards for Genetic Information Recommends Robust Techniques for Deidentification
From the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): EPIC filed comments with the Department of Health and Human Services, advising the federal agency to strengthen the requirements for classifying data as “de-identified” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. HHS proposed a rule that would clarify HIPAA and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination…
Another celebrity hospital leak?
I expected that it would only be a matter of time before details of golfer Tiger Woods’ care at Health Central Hospital would begin to leak, and today’s news providing the alias under which he was admitted plus additional confidential patient details will necessarily require an investigation. Celebrity website TMZ attributes some of the details…