Your private medical documents can be faxed to strangers. The so-called “privacy” laws recently passed by Congress actually provide for less privacy and allow thousands of individuals and organizations to easily view your medical records.

It’s Obama Care and medical privacy on this week’s Independent Thinking as the Independence Institutes Health Care Policy Center Director Linda Gorman and Colorado Transparency Project Director Amy Oliver-Cooke join Jon Caldara to discuss the political and policy implications for Colorado of the recently passed federal health care reform bill (otherwise known as Obama Care), and the implications for medical privacy in Colorado should the state legislature pass House Bill 1330, the All-Payer Database, which would allow the state to collect and store your personal health care information without your consent.

Obama Care and Medical Privacy (Video)

A new law in Oklahoma is controversial for its disclosure of information which may violate patient privacy, according to critics. See video and find out more about the new law which will go into effect on Nov. 1, 2009. The law in question is the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act. It will require doctors to disclose information about women who have had abortions; information derived from a questionnaire with 37 items of personal information which will then be posted on a publicly accessible Web site.

The Oklahoma Department of Health will be required to publish data online. Names will not be published, however, the following will be included among those 37 items: race, marital status, financial circumstances, years of education, number of previous pregnancies, and reason for seeking the abortion. Additionally, if a doctor does not provide the information, he or she will be criminally penalized and lose his or her medical license.

“The law itself is contrary to our Constitution,” said Lora Joyce Davis, an Oklahoma resident who, along with former state Rep. Wanda Jo Stapleton, has filed a lawsuit over the measure. [...]

“These are women who are already in a tragic situation, and the law will expose them about a very, very personal matter,” Davis told Foxnews.com on Tuesday. “It’s a violation of patient privacy rights to put that information up there.”

Source: New Oklahoma Abortion Law Violates Patient Privacy, Critics Charge

In a separate interview Davis discussed the impact on women in small towns.

“This law asks for so much information, and they are going to put it on the Internet for public scorn,” said Davis. “Women who have abortions are considered murderers by many people, and you are going to put the name of a town of 200 and the fact that the girl is 17 and it’s her first pregnancy and she in the 10th grade. People are going to know who it is.”

Source: Abortion Law Akin to ‘Undressing Women’

Video is below.

New Oklahoma Abortion Law Violates Patient Privacy (Video)

Filmmaker Chris Atkins has caught three British tabloids The Sunday Mirror, News of the World and People, in an attempt to purchase medical records of such celebrities as actor Hugh Grant and film director Guy Ritchie. Video footage has been revealed. It is a potential violation of Data Protection Act (DPA), privacy law in the UK.

A fourth tabloid declined; The Sunday Express, in refusing to meet with Atkins, who was posing as an administrative nurse in a fictitious cosmetic surgery clinic, told him that his proposal was “legal minefield” because it went against the code of practice of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which is the industry’s self-regulating body.

“We wanted to do a test to see how they would react,” Atkins told Reuters. “It is just showing the public what goes on behind the stories that they pay for every day.”

Reuters further reports that The Sunday Mirror proposed to pay 3,000 pounds ($4,900) for every story published.

Source: British Tabloids Caught Out By Filmmaker’s Hoaxes

The Guardian in noting that the documentary, Starsuckers, will open at the London Film Festival, reveals that they are previewing the undercover footage from the film; this includes video of Atkins’ making cold calls to the four tabloids in which he claimed his ex-girlfriend was an administrative nurse at a clinic and had asked him to make “discreet enquiries” as to whether she could make money through the release of information about the celebrities which she could obtain via the clinic.

The story continues here: Tabloids lured by celebrity plastic surgery hoax

The video can be seen here “Revealed: Secret footage of tabloids being offered confidential information about celebrities: Video

British Tabloids in Medical Privacy Breach in Hoax by Starsuckers Filmmaker (Video)

H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine dangers and risks are in the news. Read more about what is being said on the growing concerns on flu shot risks versus swine flu risks.

Here is a round-up of recent news reports along with links to white papers discussing the vaccine risks in detail and video from the recent rally of health care workers in Albany, New York where mandatory vaccine rules are in effect for those who work in health care. See: N.Y. health care workers protest mandatory H1N1 flu shots

A second rally will take place: Albany ER nurses launch Swine Flu battle. Albany ER nurses launch Swine Flu battle

Urgent lawsuit filed against FDA to halt swine flu vaccines; claims FDA violated federal law. Natural News

Vaccine revolt! Swine flu vaccine support crumbles as flimsy rationale for H1N1 shots becomes apparent. Natural News

H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine, Possible Side Effects and the Potential Dangers of Squalene. Injury Board

Can Health-Care Workers Be Forced to Get Flu Shots? Time

For more in depth information on the risks of H1N1 here are two white papers by Richard Gale and Gary Null, Ph.D. These are pdf documents; the links will open in a new window.

• Flu Vaccines: Are They Effective and Safe?
• Vaccines’ Dark Inferno: What is not on insert labels?

Here are video reports.

Video Link

Video Link

H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Dangers and Risks (Video)

The employee at the center of the UCLA Medical Center medical privacy breach scandal, claims nosiness as her motive. That’s somewhat akin to a security guard caught sleeping, saying, “That was just me taking a nap.” Although UCLA would not release her name, the LA Times found her and interviewed her.

The UCLA Medical Center employee who allegedly pried into the private medical records of the governor’s wife and 60 others in a burgeoning scandal was a low-ranking administrative specialist who told The Times on Tuesday that “it was just me being nosy.”

“Clearly I made a mistake; let’s put it like that,” Lawanda J. Jackson, 49, said when asked in a telephone interview why she improperly looked at the records of so many patients, including California First Lady Maria Shriver and actress Farrah Fawcett.

“I didn’t leak anything or anything like that,” said Jackson, who had worked at the hospital since she was 16. “It wasn’t for money or anything. It was just looking.”

UCLA took steps last May to fire Jackson after determining that she had inappropriately accessed dozens of electronic medical records, UCLA officials say. But the employee resigned in July before she could be fired, spokeswoman Roxanne Moster said. (Previously, the hospital told The Times that it had fired Jackson.)

Neither UCLA nor state health officials have confirmed Jackson’s identity, but The Times was able to verify it.

The breaches have triggered several state investigations and created a major embarrassment for UCLA. The hospital could face serious sanctions from the California Department of Public Health, and Jackson could face criminal charges for allegedly violating a federal privacy law.

Although such charges are uncommon, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have launched a preliminary inquiry into the matter, a source in the U.S. attorney’s office said Tuesday.

“We’re certainly interested and we’re looking into it,” said the source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

Among the 61 patients whose records Jackson allegedly viewed in 2006 and 2007 were 33 celebrities, politicians and other well-known people, state officials have said.

UCLA’s ability to keep patients’ information private has been at issue since The Times reported last month that the university was trying to fire 13 workers and was disciplining 12 others for peeking into the records of pop star Britney Spears, who was hospitalized in its neuropsychiatric unit in January. (More.)

Britney Spears

As the LA Times article goes on to point out, it may not be as simple as one nosy employee. In an earlier story, the LA Times discussed other celebrity medical privacy breaches at UCLA.

When asked last week if there were other recent high-profile breaches along the lines of the ones involving Spears and Fawcett, UCLA’s chief compliance and privacy officer Carole A. Klove said, “Not to my knowledge.” A UCLA spokeswoman said Sunday that Klove was referring only to current cases.

While looking into the breaches in Fawcett’s case, a state inspector discovered the other violations Friday. The state Department of Public Health said it now has several investigations underway, and it is working with the federal government.

“UCLA assured us — the state — that the initial breach [of Spears' records] was an anomaly,” Belshé said. “And we have since learned that, simply put, it is not anomalous.”

The latest development at UCLA highlights the irony that as privacy laws have become stronger, the computerization of medical records can increase the risk of unauthorized scrutiny.
Such widespread breaches, however, appear to be rare. Computers allow UCLA and other hospitals to track which employees call up individual records.

In Spears’ case, Feinberg said, UCLA was able to quickly identify trespassers and take almost immediate action against them, demonstrating that the medical center had learned from previous lapses.

Shriver and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were notified Friday evening that her records had been viewed inappropriately, state officials said Sunday.

Shriver, a former contributing anchor to Dateline NBC and niece of President Kennedy, could not be reached Sunday.

In a statement, Schwarzenegger said that “a breach of any patient’s medical records is outrageous” and that he had called on his administration to take action after the first incident — Spears’ case — was reported last month.

“Patients’ medical records should be private — period,” Schwarzenegger said. “No one should have to worry that an unauthorized person is reviewing their private medical records.” (More.)

California Governor Arnold-Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver

The problem is not lack of laws, but lack of enforcement.

When Congress passed a federal medical privacy law more than a decade ago, it was hailed as a new level of protection for patients nationwide. But even though the government has received about 34,000 complaints of privacy violations since it officially began enforcing the law five years ago, only a handful of defendants have been criminally prosecuted.

The half a dozen or so cases mainly involved clerical workers who pilfered patient information, using it to open credit card accounts or selling it to crooks who tried to bilk Medicare and the Internal Revenue Service.

Moreover, although the federal Health and Human Services Department has the authority to levy civil fines on medical service providers for privacy violations, it has yet to do so.

The recent revelation of snooping by UCLA Medical Center employees into the files of Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett, California first lady Maria Shriver and dozens of other patients, however, may force a second look at the federal law, widely known as HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

Critics say the government’s approach — which focuses on getting providers to correct violations — may be too lenient, particularly at a time when medical records are increasingly being shifted from file folders to computers. In addition, a Justice Department legal opinion has stated that the law applies primarily to organizations — hospitals, health insurance plans and doctors’ offices — and only secondarily to individuals such as the low-level clerks most often implicated in information theft.

“If you are punishing the [organization] but not the person who actually did the dirty deed, then we are missing the boat,” said Doreen Z. McQuarrie, a Houston lawyer who specializes in healthcare issues and has studied the federal law.

The law was supposed to have had its greatest impact behind the scenes, ushering in a new era of sensitivity to patient privacy in the healthcare industry. But skeptics say that has not been the case.

“What the rules were supposed to do was regulate one of the most common conversations we have: ‘How are you?’ ” said Dennis Melamed, editor of the Health Information Privacy/Security Alert, which tracks the law and its enforcement. “They did it with an incomplete set of instructions, and when you are talking about an industry as huge as healthcare, that gets to be pretty difficult.” (More.)

In the final analysis, something needs to be done besides officials making the usual apologetic, hand wringing statements after the fact. To learn more about U.S. medical privacy laws and what you can do to protect yourself, see the following resources.

• EPIC Medical Privacy Resource Page
• Office for Civil Rights – HIPAA

Farrah Fawcett’s medical privacy has been breached at UCLA Medical Center.  Details of her cancer treatments and speculations about her state of mind that were published in The National Enquirer were derived from the sale of this information, making this case especially egregious and painful for Fawcett.   As the LA Times reports.

Months before UCLA Medical Center caught staffers snooping in the medical records of pop star Britney Spears, ’70s TV icon Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had surreptitiously gone through records of her cancer treatments there, documents and interviews show.

Fawcett’s lawyers said they are concerned that the information may have been subsequently leaked or sold to tabloids, including the National Enquirer.

Shortly after UCLA doctors told Fawcett that her cancer had returned — and before she had told her son and closest friends — the Enquirer posted the news on its website. Indeed, alarming headlines regularly cropped up in the Enquirer and its sister publication, the Globe, within days of Fawcett’s treatments at UCLA.

UCLA terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett’s records, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This was the second time that Fawcett’s privacy had been breached at UCLA. In a 2006 letter, one of her physicians, Gary Gitnick, informed Fawcett that a former hospital contractor had listed her name on his blog, “suggesting you are a patient and/or charitable donor of mine and UCLA.”

As Fawcett, now 61, was being treated at UCLA, officials had been monitoring access to some records to guard against a privacy breach — and found none, said Carole A. Klove, chief compliance and privacy officer for UCLA’s health system.

But after the Enquirer ran its exclusive story, “Farrah’s Cancer Is Back!,” last May, Fawcett complained to another of her doctors, Eric Esrailian, and UCLA launched an investigation and looked at additional records systems. The hospital then discovered “multiple reviews” of her records by a worker who was not involved in Fawcett’s treatment, Klove said.

Klove said the hospital found no evidence that the worker had either disclosed or sold the information she acquired. Klove would not identify the worker involved, citing privacy rules.

[...]

Fawcett, who appeared in the 1970s television series “Charlie’s Angels,” the TV movie “The Burning Bed” and a bestselling swimsuit poster, declined to comment.

Associates say the latest breach has left her shaken. She plans to meet with Dr. David Feinberg, chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System, but the meeting has been postponed several times and is being rescheduled.

“She’s been invaded — and these are the people who she entrusted her life to,” said Craig J. Nevius, who is producing the upcoming documentary “A Wing and a Prayer,” which chronicles Fawcett’s battle with anal cancer and her efforts to protect her privacy.

One of Fawcett’s lawyers, Kim Swartz, said his client was reluctant to sue over the leaked information, but added, “This is such an ugly situation.

“This has been very hard for her,” Swartz said. “Not knowing who has her personal information has taken an incredible toll on her.” (More.)

Farrah Fawcett publicly revealed her battle with cancer in 2006. This case further underscores the need and importance to guard everyone’s medical privacy.

While very few others will leave Britney alone, medical professionals must be held to a higher standard. Violating anyone’s medical privacy is unethical as well as against the law.

UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears during her recent hospitalization in its psychiatric unit, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.

In addition, six physicians face discipline for peeking at her computerized records, the person said.

Questioned about the breaches, officials acknowledged that it was not the first time UCLA had disciplined workers for looking at Spears’ records. Several were caught prying into records after Spears gave birth to her first son, Sean Preston, in September 2005 at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, officials said. Some were fired.

“It’s not only surprising, it’s very frustrating and it’s very disappointing,” said Jeri Simpson, the Santa Monica hospital’s director of human resources, who handled the discipline in the first instance.

“I feel like we do everything that we possibly can to ensure the privacy of our patients and I know we feel horrible that it happened again.”

Simpson said UCLA treats celebrities “all the time and you never hear about this.”

“I don’t know what it is about this particular person, I don’t know what it is about her,” she added, referring to Spears.

Hoping to head off such problems, UCLA officials sent a memo the morning Spears was hospitalized Jan. 31, reminding employees that they were not allowed to peruse records unless directly caring for a patient. Spears, 26, was not specifically mentioned.

“Each member of our workforce, which includes our physicians, faculty, employees, volunteers and students, is responsible to ensure that medical information is only accessed as required for treatment, for facilitating payment of a claim or for supporting our healthcare operations,” chief compliance and privacy officer Carole A. Klove wrote in an e-mail to all employees.

“Please remember that any unauthorized access by a workforce member will be subject to disciplinary action, which could include termination.”

Such prying is also considered a violation of state and federal laws governing medical privacy. The laws allow for fines of up to $250,000, although such penalties are uncommon. Under different laws, separate fines are allowed if patients are receiving treatment for mental illness or substance abuse.

The state Department of Public Health said late Friday that it had opened an investigation of the hospital.

The LA Times chronicles several other cases of breeches of celebrity medical privacy.

A modern horror story. Nataline Sarkisyan died hours after CIGNA reversed its denial of a liver transplant after public protests.

A grieving family is blaming an insurance company for the death Thursday of a 17-year-old leukemia patient, who died hours after the company reversed course and agreed to pay for her to receive a liver transplant.

Nataline Sarkisyan was being treated at UCLA Medical Center, where she had been unresponsive in intensive care for about three weeks, her mother said.

“She had a 65% chance of survival if she had gotten the liver,” Hilda Sarkisyan said from her home this morning.

The Sarkisyans’ insurer, Philadelphia-based Cigna HealthCare, denied the transplant earlier this month.

Doctors at UCLA sent a letter Dec. 11 to Cigna emphasizing that Nataline was eligible for a transplant, Hilda Sarkisyan said. But Cigna refused to pay, citing a lack of medical evidence the procedure would help.

Hilda Sarkisyan said the company was trying to save money. “They just like to collect. They don’t want to deliver,” she said.

On Thursday, the family rallied supporters online and staged a protest at Cigna’s Glendale office with about 150 people, including many members of the local Armenian community and the California Nurses Assn., which had released statements supporting the family’s cause.

Later in the day, Cigna released a statement approving the transplant payment.

An ABCNews article quotes the family’s attorney.

Attorney Mark Geragos said that Cigna “maliciously killed her” and that he hopes to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna HealthCare for the death of Sarkisyan.

District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons declined to comment on the request for murder or manslaughter charges, saying it would be inappropriate to do so until Geragos submits evidence supporting his request.

“They took my daughter away from me,” said Nataline’s father, Krikor, who appeared at a news conference with his 21-year-old son, Bedros.

The article goes on to note the doctors urged CIGNA to reverse its decision.

Geri Jenkins of the California Nurses Association said the Sarkisyans had insurance, and medical providers felt comfortable performing the medical procedure. In that situation, the the insurer should defer to medical experts, she said.

“They have insurance, and there’s no reason that the doctors’ judgment should be overrided by a bean counter sitting there in an insurance office,” Jenkins said.

Doctors at the UCLA Medical Center actually signed a letter urging Cigna to review its decision. Nataline Sarkisyan was sedated into a coma to stabilize her as the family filed appeals in the case.

During the middle of Thursday’s protest, Hilda Sarkisyan fielded a call from Cigna alerting her that her daughter’s procedure had been given the green light. Cigna released a statement announcing the company “decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant.”

Clearly, medical decisions are the purview of doctors, patients and their families and the interests and, indeed, the lives of patients can be and are lost when insurance companies ascribe to cost cutting motives.

Here are a couple of news reports on the tragedy.

A new law in Minnesota may violate privacy.

About 24 hours after a baby is born in Minnesota, a hospital nurse pricks a heel and squeezes five drops of blood.

Three blood spots go straight to a state Department of Health lab in St. Paul. Two spots are sent by courier to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Within days, the family will know if the child has one of more than 50 rare hereditary conditions that can now be detected and treated.

For little Ella Madison, it may have made the difference between life and death.

Ella has cystic fibrosis, where mucus clogs the lungs and pancreas. Such kids can die from lung infections or starve because they can’t absorb food. Because the disease was diagnosed at Ella’s birth, she started daily drugs and nebulizers. A charmer with big blue eyes and a dazzling smile, she now appears to be a healthy, normal 19-month-old.

But the state screening program that likely saved Ella is now at risk as Minnesota becomes the battleground in the first big clash between genetics and privacy in the DNA age.

The article continues.