Healthcare Privacy – You and the Web

My colleague pointed out an interesting article on CNN. As it reads it’s pointing out the fact that many health insurance providers are already making available patients information on-line. There would be many, who didn’t even know what sorts of information is already available about themselves.

It points out some of the advantages like, easy access for travel, the ability to better get second opinions, and always having a readily available source for your health information. Some of the obvious disadvantages would be major privacy issues, which could include the sale of information or the disclosure of information that could potentially be used against you for future endeavors.

Amanda Angelotti, a spokeswoman for Google Health, sums up a great deal here.

“In some sense, no one can ever really know about the data they hand over, whether it’s financial data or medical data or anything else,” Angelotti says. “In some sense you can never be truly protected. But if we can’t protect people’s personal information, they wouldn’t trust us and use our products.”

The main issue here, is the fact that most of this information is already readily available, even to those other then yourself.

All I needed to get them was a phone call to my insurance company and information other people might know, such as my Social Security number, date of birth and address.

It wouldn’t take much for anyone who actually knows you, or simply sifts through some garbage to come up with enough information to obtain your records.

This is one area where we in the US are falling behind the rest of the world in the privacy sector. Mainly because of the privatized health care systems we have. In other areas where the health care is run by the government, they have much stronger, and stricter requirements in place for protecting your personal information.

So, as a precaution if this is something your worried about, take the time to contact your insurance company and determine if your records are available, and what information is actually available. Then you yourself can make the decision as to what information you want out there.

Sadly this is one area where those without health insurance can feel a little better about their privacy, in the sense that at least their information isn’t already available.