文章基本信息

标题：Privacy Versus Public Health: The Impact of Current Confidentiality Rules
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作者：Daniel Wartenberg ; W. Douglas Thompson
期刊名称：American journal of public health
印刷版ISSN：0090-0036
出版年度：2010
卷号：100
期号：3
页码：407-412
DOI：10.2105/AJPH.2009.166249
语种：English
出版社：American Public Health Association
摘要：Public health research and practice often have been facilitated through the evaluation and study of population-based data collected by local, state, and federal governments. However, recent concerns about identify theft, confidentiality, and patient privacy have led to increasingly restrictive policies on data access, often preventing researchers from using these valuable data. We believe that these restrictions, and the research impeded or precluded by their implementation and enforcement, have had a significant negative impact on important public health research. Members of the public health community should challenge these policies through their professional societies and by lobbying legislators and health officials to advocate for changes that establish a more appropriate balance between privacy concerns and the protection of public health. WITH INCREASING frequency, valid concerns are being raised about the privacy of medical records (hereafter, protected health information) and other personal information. Consequences of breaches in the privacy of this information are extremely serious. Negative effects include inappropriate and unjustified employment termination, loss of individual health insurance, and illegal use of one's identity in a host of ways, from charges on credit cards to passport fraud. In response to these privacy concerns, various professional groups, such as local institutional review boards (specially constituted review bodies established or designated by an entity to protect the welfare of human participants in biomedical or behavioral research¹) and the National Institutes of Health's Office of Human Subjects Protection, have introduced rules and regulations to ensure the confidentiality of patients and participants more effectively. Most notably, the US Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA; 42 USC §201 et seq) in 1996 and promulgated HIPAA's Privacy Rule in 2003, in part in an effort to strike a balance between protecting the confidentiality of personal health information and legitimate use of these data. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes national standards to protect individuals' medical records and other personal health information and applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers that conduct certain health care transactions electronically. The Rule requires appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of personal health information, and sets limits and conditions on the uses and disclosures that may be made of such information without patient authorization.² In short, this broad-reaching rule regulates the use and disclosure of protected health information throughout the United States.²