[liberationtech] If patients don't care about their privacy, should doctors?

[Andrew Lewman]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 09:15:53PM -0400, katiephr at gmail.com wrote 7.3K bytes in 0 lines about:

The first thing is patients do care about their records. Saying otherwise
is a false dichotomy.

: charged with rolling out a telehealth (read: Skype) clinical program for

Possibly, Skype is better than how I've seen some places do it now with more
traditional video presence systems (which lack encryption in transit as
a start).

: protect patient data (even thought HIPAA is supposed to protect this data).

Every doctor's office I've visited in the past few years requires me to
sign a HIPAA waiver saying the office can share my data with anyone
they deem necessary for my medical care. When pressed, this includes
my insurance company, any insurance company, and any 3rd party they have
a relationship with for any reason (possibly including the janitorial
contractors). What happens to my records when shared with those
3rd parties is up to each companies' own privacy/HIPAA compliance
policies.

Of course, if I refuse to sign the waiver, they refuse to see/treat me.

: What would you say in this situation?

I agree with your points. Maybe they need to see some solutions and help
making decisions on which way to proceed. The benefits of tele-health
can still be achieved with privacy enhancing technologies and putting
the patient in control of their own data.

Perhaps ask the people quoting you these things for their medical records,
as if they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear by
sharing them. ;)


-- 
Andrew
pgp 0x6B4D6475