Concerns About Privacy Rules Can Complicate Good Care
February 20, 2007
In the Wall Street Journal’s Doctor’s Office column by Benjamin Brewer, M.D.: Doctors and hospitals are supposed to be able to share information about a patient’s medical treatment without signed consent forms and other red tape. That isn’t working.
Before the privacy regulations, doctors, hospitals and their medical records personnel relied on their professional ethics and individual policies when exchanging information. It worked well for most emergencies. In a pinch I could get the information I needed with a phone call.
Initially I was hopeful that the complexity and cost of the privacy provisions would be made up for by easier flow of critical information. From my perspective it hasn’t worked out so well. I face bureaucracy — bureaucracy that the letter of the law doesn’t require — with virtually every hospital and health-care entity I deal with.
