Alex Matthews-King reports: Insurance companies requesting GPs release their patient’s entire medical record under the Data Protection Act are abusing fundamental rights enshrined in EU law, the Information Commissioner’s Office has ruled. GPs are no longer obliged to comply with requests from insurers even when a patient has given consent and could even be in…
Category: Healthcare
NHS denies personal information will be shared in appointments row
Stuart Sumner reports: A letter from NHS England to EMIS Health, a firm that supplies software to GP surgeries, reveals plans to extract data around millions of patients’ GP appointments within the next couple of months. Whilst some media outlets have claimed that the data will include personally identifiable information – which has provoked an outcry among…
UK: Privacy storm over GP visits: No10 demands details of millions of confidential appointments
Gerri Peev and Jack Doyle report: A Downing Street official has demanded confidential details of millions of GP appointments. Sparking yet another NHS privacy row, she has ordered the firm in charge of bookings at most English surgeries to hand over the sensitive data urgently. The information includes the date, time and duration of appointments…
House of Representatives Passes Bill to Permit Broader Use and Disclosure of Protected Health Information for Research Purposes
Hunton & Williams writes: On July 10, 2015, the United States House of Representatives passed the 21st Century Cures Act (the “Act”), which is intended to ease restrictions on the use and disclosure of protected health information (“PHI”) for research purposes. Currently, the HIPAA Privacy Rule permits the use and disclosure of PHI for research purposes without…