Good Essay On Day Month Year

Health Privacy

1) No, because the secrecy should be considered as a sacred requirement to save trust and cooperation in physician-patient relationship. The hospital employees should have determined themselves which of the patients SSI eligible was. As long as the agents of hospital were involved in the process not the law firm employees it would be a legal action authorized by the patient.
2) The secretary’s action was an unauthorized disclosure of confidential information. She didn’t have the right to make copies to send them to the radio. She should have been held liable because she knew the existence of the physician-patient relationship in these forms. She knew her action could lead to damage the patients and the hospital relationship.
3) I agree with the court because the duty of doctors is to keep patients’ confidentiality otherwise people won’t trust doctors any more. Even the Hippocratic Oath states this. It is not only an ethical duty but also a legal duty as well. The hospital could have used another legal way to collect bills.
4) Under current law healthcare providers have the right to corporate with Medical Debt Collection Agencies. Such agencies have the right to collect debts even to report of the debt to the credit bureaus. Warren General Hospital could have received explicit authorization from each patient which named the law firm as a party authorized to have access to confidential information.
5) I think they did because they used much more information than it really needed to collect bills as the information of the medical condition of each patient. It was more than required. Another proof was that even the secretary used it in personal interests.

Reference:

Ref: Biddle v. Warren General Hospital, 86 Ohio St. 3d 395 (1999)