Question

A strong privacy advocacy group has expressed alarm about the potential problems that the system could create. How would you respond to those concerns?

Answer 1

Ans) Existing ethical, legal, and other approaches to protecting confidentiality and privacy of personal health data offer some safeguards, but major gaps and limitations remain. So the question arises from strong privacy advocacy group of potential problems that it could create.

To respond to this concern-

- The Privacy Protection Study Commission (PPSC) was created by the Privacy Act of 1974 to investigate the personal data recordkeeping practices of governmental, regional, and private organizations.

- Options related to uniform legislation, consent and participation rights, disclosure policies, and governance, and advanced a set of recommendations favoring strong federal preemptive legislation and responsible organizational policies to protect privacy and confidentiality of person-specific information.

- Confidentiality is addressed by a recommendation for preemptive federal legislation that all health care data be confidential, protected as such, and access to it controlled.

- The establishment of data protection and data integrity boards to provide oversight of security and access in HDOs.

- To implement protection of health care data, addressing the security and automated systems and networks supporting HDOs.

- Address patient privacy rights that patients can have access and other rights regarding their records, and be dealt with through a code of fair health information practices.

- To accommodate patient expectations of privacy, patients can have certain legally assured rights to recover damages and force compliance if health care information is misused, abused, or improperly released to unauthorized parties.

- To address privacy—the issue of access to personal information concern who should and should not have access to person-identified information and under what circumstances.