Content by Keyword: Confidentiality

The Commission's inquiry into the creation, maintenance, use, and disclosure of medical records and medical-record information led it to six basic conclusions. First , medical records now contain more information and are now available to more users than ever before.

The physician-patient relationship is an inherently intrusive one in that the patient who wants and needs medical care must grant the doctor virtually unconstrained discretion to delve into the details of his life and his person. As a practical matter, because so much information may be necessary for proper diagnosis and treatment, no area of inqu

In the early part of this century, physicians, most of them practicing alone, delivered 85 percent of all medical services in the country.

1 The Use of Polygraphs and Similar Devices by Federal Agencies, Report of the Government Operations Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, 94th Congress, 2d Session, 1976, p. 61; Rights to Privacy of Federal Employees, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Retirement and Employee Benefits of the Committee on Pos1 Office and Civil Service, U

With a few important exceptions, the Commission's specific recommendations on record keeping in the employee-employer relationship also embody a voluntary scheme for resolving questions of fairness in the collection, use, and dissemination of employee records. The reasons for not recommending statutory implementation of many of these recommendatio

External forces can impinge heavily on employment-related record keeping. Government action, technological change, evolving managerial viewpoints and techniques, perspectives and goals of business firms and labor unions, market forces, and change in the composition and character of the work force can all have an effect. Yet because policy must be

A comprehensive study of the effects of record keeping on personal privacy must include records generated in the context of the relationship between employer and employee. The employment relationship affects most people over the greater part of their adult lives, and is basic to the economic and social well-being of our society. Loss of work is fo

1 American Council of Life Insurance, Life Insurance Fact Book, (New York: American Council of Life Insurance, 1976), p. 9. 2 Health Insurance Institute, The Source Book of Health Insurance Data 1974 - 1975, (New York: Health Insurance Institute, 1975), p. 19. 3 American Council of Life Insurance, op. cit., p. 38. 4 Automobile I

The Commission's approach to the problems described in this chapter has been to focus on strengthening and balancing the relationship between the individual insurance applicant, policyholder, or claimant and the insurance institution with whom he deals. As indicated at the outset, the Commission's recommendations have three objectives: (1) to c

The Commission's approach to the problems described in this chapter has been to focus on strengthening and balancing the relationship between the individual insurance applicant, policyholder, or claimant and the insurance institution with whom he deals. As indicated at the outset, the Commission's recommendations have three objectives: (1) to c

There is an understandable public concern about the confidentiality of records about individuals that insurance institutions and their support  organizations maintain. As previously noted, the collection of information about an individual without his full knowledge of the scope of the inquiry and its consequences may weaken the relationship betwe

The extensive flow of information about individuals into and out of organizations that conduct underwriting and claims investigations for insurers is described in Chapter 8.

Life and health insurers and their agents have different reasons for collecting and using information about individuals than property and liability insurers. In the first place, people often have to be persuaded to buy life insurance, whereas there is a ready market for property and liability coverage. Moreover, because life insurance is often sol

The activities of the nation's 4,700 insurance companies touch the lives of all Americans in a variety of ways. Two out of three Americans have life insurance protection; 1 90 percent of the civilian population under age 65 is covered by individual or group health insurance policies; 2 and 15 million are covered by the pension plans that life in

The Commission had three basic alternatives for giving effect to its policy recommendations: (1) voluntary compliance; (2) statutory creation of rights, interests, or responsibilities enforceable through either individual or governmental action; and (3) establishment of ongoing governmental mechanisms to investigate, study, and report on privacy p

The third competing interest the Commission identified is the interest in preventing and prosecuting crime. Organizations do and should have the means of protecting themselves from suspected fraud in insurance claims, fraudulent use of credit cards, multiple welfare applications, and the like. Organizations, both private and public, exchange infor

The second competing societal value the Commission identified is freedom of information. In enacting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, 13 and strengthening it eight years later, the Congress gave expression to society's strong interest in opening the records of Federal government agencies to public inspection.

The legitimate expectation of confidentiality is a concept the Commission endorses for several of the record-keeping relationships examined in this report. The policy objective is that when the relationship is one involving confidentiality of records, the record keeper shall be constrained from disclosing information about an individual without hi

Every member of a modern society acts out the major events and transitions of his life with organizations as attentive partners. Each of his countless transactions with them leaves its mark in the records they maintain about him. The uniqueness of this record-generating pressure cannot be overemphasized. Never before the Twentieth Century have org

Issues of public policy rarely, if ever, emerge on the political scene fully developed and fully articulated. Rather, they result from gradual changes in the social and economic environment, which are then identified and intensively debated. This has been the pattern with the subject of this report. The relationships between individuals and variou