Supreme Court: Rules on EMRs not too lax
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected claims by privacy advocates that the Bush administration's rules pertaining to the development of an information system for electronic transfer of health data are too lax in protecting privacy. A suit filed by 10 groups representing 750,000 consumers, health care providers, and patients challenged a provision of a 2003 rule that says health care providers may decide whether to obtain patients' consent to use or disclose health information and that the state may impose more stringent requirements. The suit sought to reverse a court of appeals ruling that said the government would be held to blame for any privacy violations. The government countered that the new rule did not displace or conflict with existing privacy protections.
President Bush campaigned on the issue of standardizing and computerizing medical records for all Americans within the next decade as a means of controlling costs and curbing documentation-based medical errors. Because all health care providers will need to have compatible technology and paper records and existing electronic records translated to a universal system, privacy and security of the records as they are converted has been a key issue for debate. Bush has said he is sensitive to privacy concerns and favors some level of consent before information is disclosed.
Report: Lax handling of doctors who do crimes?
A study conducted by the watchdog group Public Citizen and published in the September issue of Case Western School of Law's Health Matrix magazine says physicians disciplined by states and federal agencies for infractions related to criminal conduct between 1990 and 1999 often escaped with a "slap on the wrist" and are, in many cases, still practicing.
"The punishments meted out to doctors who break the law are not strong enough to protect the public health," said Peter Lurie, MD, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group and an author of the article.
However, the chairman of the American Medical Association, Cecil Wilson, MD, countered that fewer than 1% of all physicians has ever committed a crime, and that state medical boards are meting out punishment in line with the severity of the crimes or infractions.
The authors determined that 44% of entries for disciplinary actions related to criminal activity directly involved patients, and an additional 33% involved the health care system but not patients. Infractions involving patients tended to result in more severe sanctions. They found that 59% of cases involving criminal conduct received a severe disciplinary action (revocation, surrender, suspension, emergency suspension, probation, and restriction of licensure). The report, "U.S. Physicians Disciplined for Criminal Activity," may be accessed on-line at www.citizen.org/publications.
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