Legislation makes it obligatory that electronic medical records be kept secure and not shared with anyone not authorised to look at them. Is this leading to an overdrive, as some recent events indicate?

OUT OF harm's reach but... Shaju John

Two bizarre occurrences of this year in the US should be dismaying to those who uphold the sanctity of maintaining the confidentiality of health information of individuals, a requirement imposed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), 1996.

In the first, a young Colorado woman of 17, Cheyenne Corbet, who became pregnant, possibly outside wedlock, hid this information from her parents out of sheer fear. When she was first taken to a doctor by her father, she told her physician that she did not want her pregnancy to be disclosed to anyone, and went on to sign a prescribed form under HIPAA.

Not receiving any medical advice thereafter, she delivered a baby while she was in the shower of her parents' home. Finding her bleeding profusely, her mother rushed her to hospital. It was only at this point of time that the mother got to know of the newborn. The police later found the baby dead in the girl's bedroom wrapped in a towel. Obviously, the child had died of asphyxiation. Cheyenne is now facing charges of manslaughter.

In a more recent case reported from Washington State, on November 7, Chris McCune, 42, was stabbed by his girlfriend, Forcen, and was taken to hospital for emergency care. Although he had suffered serious spleen and lower heart injury, McCune told the doctors attending on him that no one should be informed. Thereafter he became unconscious.

His parents, with whom he was staying before the stabbing, were in the dark until an acquaintance of the assailant tipped them off about the incident. Thereafter it was a week of nightmare for the parents, both 80, who just did not get to know where their son was being treated and what his condition was.

Posted by Bruce Cornett on 12/26/06; 1:33:16 PM from the HIPAA News dept.