Content by Keyword: Patient Rights

As is evident from the preceding sections, the insurance industry is highly dependent upon recorded information about individuals. This dependence creates a number of privacy protection problems, some of which are inherent in the insurance system, but can be controlled, and some of which present real or potential abuses that need to be eliminated.

There are essentially two types of insurance companies: stock companies owned by shareholders and mutual companies owned by policyholders. (Blue Cross and Blue Shield are nonprofit associations which policyholders join.) Although the largest life insurance companies are of the mutual type, the total amount of life insurance protection in force is

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 strongest argument for the need to keep attention focused on the issue of personal privacy in record keeping is in the facts of record keeping themselves. The facts and the specific recommendations the Commission makes on the basis of its analysis of them are presented in the chapters that follow.

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 Commission's findings clearly reveal an overwhelming imbalance in the record keeping relationship between an individual and an organization, and its policy recommendations aim at strengthening the ability of the individual to participate in that relationship.

A major theme of this report is that privacy, both as a societal value and as an individual interest, does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. Indeed, "privacy" is a poor label for many of the issues the Commission addresses because to many people the concept connotes isolation and secrecy, whereas the relationships the Commission is concerned with

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

One need only glance at the dramatic changes in our country during the last hundred years to understand why the relationship between organizational record keeping and personal privacy has become an issue in almost all modern societies. The records of a hundred years ago tell little about the average American, except when he died, perhaps when and

The imbalance in the relationship between individuals and record-keeping institutions today is pointedly illustrated by the experiences of Catherine Tarver, a "welfare mother" from the State of Washington, and Mitchell Miller, a businessman from Kathleen, Georgia.

This report is about records and people. It looks toward a national policy to guide the way public and private organizations treat the records they keep about individuals. Its findings reflect the fact that in American society today records mediate relationships between individuals and organizations and thus affect an individual more easily, more

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

The Congress required the Secretary to consult with specified groups in developing the standards under sections 262 and 264. Section 264(d) of HIPAA specifically requires the Secretary to consult with the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) and the Attorney General in carrying out her responsibilities under the section.

The issue that drew the most comments overall is the question of when individuals' permission should be obtained prior to use or disclosure of their health information. We learned that individuals' views and the legal view of 'consent' for use and disclosure of health information are different and in many ways incompatible. Comments from individua

A number of facts informed our approach to this regulation. Determining the best approach to protecting privacy depends on where we start, both with respect to existing legal expectations and also with respect to the expectations of individuals, health care providers, payers and other stakeholders. From the comments we received on the proposed rul

There have been numerous federal initiatives aimed at protecting the privacy of especially sensitive personal information over the past several years -- and several decades. While the rules below are likely the largest single federal initiative to protect privacy, they are by no means alone in the field. Rather, the rules arrive in the context of

While privacy is one of the key values on which our society is built, it is more than an end in itself. It is also necessary for the effective delivery of health care, both to individuals and to populations. The market failures caused by the lack of effective privacy protections for health information are discussed below (see section V.C below). H

The number of entities who are maintaining and transmitting individually identifiable health information has increased significantly over the last 10 years. In addition, the rapid growth of integrated health care delivery systems requires greater use of integrated health information systems. The health care industry has been transformed from one t

Recently, scientists completed nearly a decade of work unlocking the mysteries of the human genome, creating tremendous new opportunities to identify and prevent many of the leading causes of death and disability in this country and around the world. Yet the absence of privacy protections for health information endanger these efforts by creating a

Until recently, health information was recorded and maintained on paper and stored in the offices of community-based physicians, nurses, hospitals, and other health care professionals and institutions. In some ways, this imperfect system of record keeping created a false sense of privacy among patients, providers, and others. Patients' health info