Fergie's Tech Blog

Health Care Privacy Law: All Bark, No Bite?

Bob Sullivan writes on The Red Tape Chronicles:

Two years ago, when Bill Clinton had heart surgery performed in New York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, 17 hospital employees -- including a doctor -- peeked at the former president's health care records out of curiosity. Earlier this year, Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital repeatedly faxed patient admission sheets to a nearby bank by accident. The faxing continued even after bank employees warned the hospital. In Hawaii, Wilcox Memorial Hospital lost a thumb drive containing personal information on every one of its 120,000 current and former patients.

None of the institutions involved in these incidents has been fined under the highly touted medical privacy law, known as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

In fact, there have been 22,664 HIPAA privacy-related complaints filed since the privacy rule took effect in 2004, and not a single institution has been fined for privacy lapses, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPPA. It's not clear that any of the three incidents above generated HIPAA privacy complaints, so the total number of privacy-related incidents is no doubt higher.

Health privacy advocates are crying foul. One even calls HIPAA a "charade."

posted by Fergie @ 10/23/2006 10:24:00 PM