who should be looking at your medical records

It’s Your Privacy

As physicians, we know many patients request that certain parts of their medical history not be formally recorded. One friend recently asked his own doctor to keep his records private. He asked the doctor if she would have any difficulty lying to the government. When she seemed reluctant, he insisted, asking, "Why not? They lie to us all the time."

There is not a person among us who does not have some health issues he or she would rather not share with the entire world. Mental illness, disability, cerebral palsy, retardation, herpes, and genetic disorders are just a few among many conditions we might choose to keep private.

Government officials already have access to your credit records and your files at the IRS and FBI. Do you want to lose control of your medical history, psychiatric profile, lab studies, diagnostic tests like CT or MRI, and unique DNA structure?

Any measure claiming to protect the privacy of personal medical information must, at a bare minimum, include the following key provisions:

The measure must aggressively enforce, not eliminate, your right to consent before your personal medical information can be released.
The measure must not require you to accept a "unique health identifier" ID number for tagging and tracking your medical records electronically.
The measure must provide that if anyone, including a government official, abuses your privacy, you as an individual have the right to sue the privacy violator. You, not some government agency acting on “your behalf,” should be compensated for any damages that result from the invasion of your privacy.