VSHP believes all medical information is sensitive and should be given the utmost protection. VSHP also believes that with access to the patient's health record comes the pharmacist's professional responsibility to safeguard the patient's rights to privacy and confidentiality. Within health systems, all authorized practitioners should be encouraged to communicate freely with each other but to maintain patient confidentiality and privacy. VSHP believes there is no potential breach of patient confidentiality when patient information is aggregated for use in legitimate research and statistical measurement and is not uniquely identifiable. Therefore, specific authorization by individual patients for access to this information is unnecessary.
Pharmacists participate extensively in clinical trials of drugs.
VSHP believes all clinical trial data must be recorded and stored in such a way that the subjects' rights of privacy and confidentiality are protected. Pharmacists should conform to all patient confidentiality regulations established by Investigational Review Boards and Committees conducting research. VSHP believes pharmacy residency programs, schools of pharmacy and other training programs must have policies and procedures to ensure the confidentiality of patient medical records while allowing pharmacy students and residents access to these records in the course of their training. VSHP believes a minimum standard for protection of patient health information should be adopted as federal law. States should retain the ability to adopt standards that are more stringent than federal law.