Medical Privacy Is About To Go The Way Of The Dodo Bird

And you thought prospective employers checking out your Facebook page was bad.

The sharing of Americans’ health information is set to explode in coming years, with millions of patients’ medical records converted to electronic form and analyzed by health-care providers, insurers, regulators and researchers.

That has prompted concerns over privacy—and now, new federal rules that aim to give patients more control over their information are posing technical and administrative problems for the doctors and hospitals that have to implement them.

Information-technology experts say the challenges illustrate how difficult it may be to protect sensitive patient information as digitization of the health-care industry expands.

The least comforting part of this article is the fact that private information might be shared “inadvertently” whether you’ve paid cash and requested privacy or not. The unholy alliance between health care providers, the government and insurers opens up a Pandora’s box of privacy issues and your most private information could slip out merely because they’re all passing information back and forth. The formerly evil (they were the devil to the Left until they signed onto Obamacare) “Big Insurance” types can have overwhelming access to all of a health care provider’s records for “quality review” and “oversight”.

And if one “i” wasn’t dotted or “t” crossed, your supposedly secure information could slip into the hands of those from whom you’re trying to keep it.