New Federal Regulation Protects Patient Privacy

Part 1: Personal Health Information Protected

On December 20, 2000 Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced the country's first-ever standards for protecting the privacy of American's personal health records. The new regulation protects medical records and other personal health information that is maintained by health care providers, hospitals, health plans, health insurance providers, and health care clearinghouses.

This new regulation protects all Americans regardless or where they live, or where they receive their health care, and insures the protection of our most private personal information, our health records. In days gone by our family doctors kept our information sealed away in their filing cabinets; however today's rapidly growing technology and the Internet provide ways that patient information is accessed and exchange with lightening speed. According to Secretary Shalala, "With these standards, all Americans will be able to have confidence that their personal health information will be protected."

How does this affect you?

The new standards, mandated by Congress when it failed to pass comprehensive privacy legislation, provide several important rights to assure the privacy of your health records including:

• limiting the nonconsensual use and release of private health information
  
• giving patients new rights to access their medical records and to know who else has accessed them
  
• restricting most disclosure of health information to the minimum needed for the intended purpose
  
• establishing new criminal and civil sanctions for improper use or disclosure
  
• establishing new requirements for access to records by researchers and others
  
• establishing a higher standard of protection for psychotherapy notes because they are not a part of the medical record and are never intended to be shared with anyone else
  
• ensuring that consent is not coerced-- providers and health plans generally cannot condition treatment on a whether a patient agrees to disclose health information for non-routine uses.

Next page > What's Covered? Employers and Your Records > Page 1, 2, 3