A tougher medical privacy law
A South Carolina company suspended an employee for refusing to divulge her medical records. A New York congresswoman's medical records revealing a suicide attempt and treatment for depression were leaked to the media on the eve of an election. A public health worker in Tampa, Fla., sent the names of 4,000 people who were HIV-positive to two newspapers.
All these breaches of medical ethics occurred in the last few years. Beginning today, such actions not only will violate ethical guidelines, they also will be illegal.
A broad new federal medical privacy law takes effect today, culminating a decade-long drive to overhaul the way doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, health care providers and others handle patient information. The law -- known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act -- creates for the first time a national standard for medical privacy, giving patients greater control over their health records.
The law's most dramatic change will be to significantly strengthen the recourse that patients have when their medical privacy is violated. Until now, a patient who felt wronged could only file a civil lawsuit, seeking financial penalties. The new law allows patients to file complaints to the Department of Health and Human Services, which can then pursue criminal penalties, including a $250,000 fine and 10 years in prison for the most serious offenses.
The new regulations, which fill a 443-page government document, have provoked confusion, fear and a rash of rumors, from the serious to the silly. Can a doctor be slapped with a big fine for talking about a patient in an elevator? (No.) Can a nurse be jailed for leaving a medical file drawer unlocked? (Again, no.)
"There really have been a number of lies about HIPAA: That you're going to make a mistake and go to jail, that kind of thing," said Steven Fleisher, a consultant who is working with the California Medical Assn., a Sacramento-based physician organization, on implementing the rules. "You have doctors sitting around hospital lounges telling each other these fairy tales."
For all its undeniable sweep, the law seems to be barely registering with most Americans. But among doctors, pharmacists, hospital and health insurers the changes already are being felt deeply -- and sometimes painfully.
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Additional expense
For months, health care providers have been scrambling to meet today's deadline amid a lot of complaints about all the additional expense and work required to comply with the rules.
