Privacy with regards to health is a major concern in many societies. It is not only a concern for individuals, but many governments also treat the matter very seriously. Health privacy can be a complicated topic. One reason for that is because there are commonly many issues involved, such as whether information should be shared with homosexual partners and how electronic health records should be stored.
The United States (US) is one of the governments that takes health privacy seriously. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA, refers to a federal public law that aims to protect the confidentiality of patient information. One way this is done is by acknowledging that a patient has the right to control her medical information. This act also limits the instances in which that information can be shared without a patient’s permission.
In many instances, there are valid reasons why a patient’s health information needs to be shared or transferred from one entity to another. For example, a health insurance company may need to access it to pay medical bills or a worker’s compensation lawyer may need to review a record to argue a claim. One of the issues that often arises in these cases is how much information should be shared. This is often handled by requirements that consider requests for medical information as valid only when they state a specific period and a specific ailment or course of treatment. When such requirements exist, the holder of information is generally prohibited from sharing any medical information that does not fit the specified criteria.
If there are not regulations in place to prevent it, there can be a clash between public interest and health privacy. For example, if a pattern of a serious communicable disease is found to be growing in a particular area, it is in the interest of public health safety to share and make use of this information. However, it is also important to protect the identities of the people who have been affected by the disease. Many laws have been enacted that allow for such information to be shared but prohibit making public any information that will identify the affected individuals.
Health privacy often deals with more than records pertaining to visits to medical facilities. In New Hampshire, for example, there is a law that requires confidentiality regarding patients’ prescriptions. This law dictates the behavior of not only the physicians who may write the prescriptions, it also dictates the behavior of brick and mortar pharmacies, Internet pharmacies, and insurance companies. This law aims to, among other things, protect patients from having their health information exploited for commercial purposes, such as advertising or marketing.
People in homosexual relationships often face difficulties in ways that other couples do not. Medical privacy can be one of those areas. It is often permissible for people to obtain medical information regarding their spouses. However, in places where gay couples are not recognized as legal family members, these individuals are often barred from accessing information about their loved ones by health privacy regulations.
