[Med-privacy] Kennedy bill

[Peter Marshall]

  Rep. Kennedy to introduce health records privacy bill

Existing laws to protect the privacy of Americans' health records have 
glaring holes, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) said today, and he will 
introduce legislation to bolster those privacy protections.

"We need a strong privacy law that covers everyone who has access" to 
individuals' health records, Kennedy said. One of his aides said the 
congressman wants to introduce the bill, to be called the Electronic 
Health Information Privacy Act, in May.

Kennedy spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference. At the event, a 
coalition of 26 national organizations urged the House to include 
privacy protections in health information technology legislation now 
under consideration.

The organizations, which span the political spectrum, wrote to House 
leaders urging them to support "a patient-centered system with patient 
privacy rights at the core of the health IT system." Deborah Peel, a 
Texas psychiatrist who heads the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, 
said none of the health IT bills pending in Congress provides adequate 
privacy protections. A bill Kennedy and Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) 
introduced last year is "the only bill...that gives patients any 
control" over who sees their records, she said.

Peel and representatives from the other organizations -- the American 
Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the 
Christian Coalition of America and the Free Congress Foundation -- said 
they favored adoption of health IT as long as privacy protections are 
designed into the systems from the start. They cannot be retrofitted 
into systems designed without strong protections, Peel said.

[Privacy Digest]