Medical information is routinely shared among a number of parties, including healthcare providers, insurance companies and employers. Sometimes that is for benign reasons, such as comparing records among thousands of patients to ensure they're all getting the best care. But as technological innovation has made it easier to distribute medical information, there has been growing concern and debate among consumers, privacy advocates, and healthcare providers about access to private medical information. Until now, patients have had to rely on state laws protecting medical privacy, which range from comprehensive to nonexistent. For the last four years, the Clinton administration has been drafting new regulations protecting patient confidentiality, and today the president unveiled them.
Nothing is more private than someone's medical or psychiatric records.
And, therefore, if we are to make freedom fully meaningful in the information age, when most of our stuff is on some computer somewhere, we have to protect the privacy of individual health records. The new federal regulations will limit the information all health care providers, and payers, can divulge without a patient's consent. The rules that we've released today, have been carefully crafted for this new era to make medical records easier to see for those who should see them, and much harder to see for those who shouldn't. Employers, for instance, shouldn't see medical records except for limited reasons such as to process insurance claims, yet too often they do. A recent survey showed that more than a third of all Fortune 500 companies check medical records before they hire or promote.