PSYCHIATRISTS RAISE ALARMS ON MEDICAL PRIVACY ISSUES, CALL FOR ADDITIONAL PATIENT PROTECTIONS
American Psychiatric Association Issues Final Comments to Health and Human Services
Washington, DC--Psychiatric physicians today voiced concerns about patient protections and the erosion of medical privacy and called for additional measures to be considered in the Administration's proposed medical privacy regulations. In its submission of final patient privacy recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American Psychiatric Association again cautioned "additional protections [in the regulations] are critically needed to protect patient privacy and to promote high quality health care."
While recognizing President Clinton's privacy proposal as a "first step" toward protecting patient privacy, the APA and its 40,000 psychiatric physicians were deeply concerned by the regulations turning away from patient informed consent as the foundation for medical record privacy. APA based both its concerns and recommendations on conclusions from the recent Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health and the U.S. Supreme Court's Jaffe v. Redmond decision that privacy is an essential requisite for effective mental health care.
The APA submission urged HHS to ensure that in the final regulations:
-- Patients are able to choose who will [and will not] see their medical records.
-- Additional protections for mental health and other particularly sensitive medical record information are added.
-- Specific patient consent requirements are designed to prevent employer access to workers' medical records.
-- Patients and all Americans are free from unreasonable police access to personal medical record information.
-- Provisions allowing states to avoid the protections are required under federal law.
-- Administrative burdens resulting in broad physician liability are reconsidered.
APA spokespersons and vice presidents Richard Harding, M.D. and Paul Appelbaum, M.D. warned of the devastation to personal and medical privacy that could result if the regulations are not amended. Appelbaum, whose editorial in The Journal of the American Medical Association (February 9, 2000) likened the proposed regulations' threats to privacy to those of on the life of an endangered species, and notes that "the danger is in the details of the proposal." As an example, he cautions that, "As drafted, the regulations address only information that is electronically maintained or transmitted" and questions if this "includes every medical note typed on a word processor, as well as billing and other information sent in electronic form." Appelbaum continues to wonder, as stated in his JAMA editorial, if "each time the privacy of medical records is traded for some other purported good, there is real risk of dissuading people from coming for treatment."
Harding joined him in questioning the proposed regulations, noting "We have heard from critics of the proposal who argue the regulations impose too many burdens and cost too much. We have heard from those who enthusiastically support the regulations. But one voice has been left out: those who argue that these regulations do not do enough to protect the medical privacy that Americans continue to lose at an alarming rate."
The American Psychiatric Association is a national medical specialty society, founded in 1844, whose 42,000 physician members specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional illnesses and substance use disorders.
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(NOTE: TO OBTAIN A COPY OF APA'S SUBMISSION LETTER TO HHS, Contact: Lynn Schultz-Writsel, [email protected])
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