Anyone with access to the computer at any affiliated hospital can then access the record. Privacy infringement is so rampant that Dr. Denise Nagel, executive director of the Coalition for Patient Rights, an advocacy group based in Cambridge, MA, advises patients not to seek insurance reimbursement because that can mean that their most personal records would no longer be private. Medicaid computer printouts are easily tapped into, revealing millions of patient names, addresses, incomes and medical records. HMOs cull these lists and send recruiters out to these people to make sales pitches. And law enforcement agencies have discovered that they can search medical data bases for specific psychiatric profiles to elicit names of suspects that fit into a given investigation The Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal statute, permits you to correct errors in the files of consumer credit agencies such as Equifax, but the mere existence of a medical data base, even a factually accurate data base, is an encroachment of traditional medical privacy.
Medical privacy is something belonging to a bygone era.
Law enforcement agencies and insurance companies are generally pleased that medical records are more accessible. The computer database industry, which for thirty years has grown into a multi-billion dollar business, is better prepared, better organized and more highly computerized than imaginable, such that patient confidentiality is simply no longer a reality. Another reality of this development is that insurance companies are becoming more confident in asserting fraud and in refusing to pay medical or life insurance claims. Later, if the insured dies of AIDS, the company can try to deny the beneficiary's claim based on fraud. However, some courts have allowed insurance companies to deny coverage regardless of the amount of time that has elapsed from the effective date of coverage, if fraud was used to obtain the policy.