Electronic Health Record and Privacy

Nurse Files Privacy Lawsuit (Nextgov.com 7/7/2009)

According to the Nextgov.com, a New Hampshire nurse has filed a lawsuit claiming that the, “health information technology sections of the 2009 stimulus bill violate her privacy protections in federal and state laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Hippocratic oath.” In light of some of my past blog postings about the EHR requirments for stimulus money and my concern that librarians have a role, I never considered the personal privacy implications of the act. Librarians have always been at the forefront of privacy protections. Many state’s even have laws protecting the privacy of library records. We all bemoaned the US Patriot Act provisions that would require libraries to provide certain information to law enforcement (that seems so long ago now.) It seems that librarians could be caught (not literally but metaphorically) between 2 ends of the spectrum on the EHR implementations. As medical librarians we see the need to be included in the EHR. We understand the importance of including links to the Evidence and research. On the other hand as I look over some of the provisions of the law, I could be personally concerned about the privacy implications of mandating the capability of sharing our personal health information across systems. As a consumer I do think that there is much benefit in having standardized storage and sharing capability of our health information across sytems, but I can also see how this can have privacy implications. I agree with Dr. Deborah Peel of the Patient Privacy Rights out of Austin TX, when she says that, “Congress must ensure consumer control over electronic health information.” (as posted on Nextgov.com). If congress is going to mandate electronic health information then they must also guard the privacy implications in the storage and standardization of the information. While I’m advocating for changes to the law, I will put in one last appeal to include a provision for including library type information in the EHR somewhere.