proper and improper access to medical records

[Ian G Batten]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Adrian Midgley wrote:

> So far as improper access - people who have neither reasonable 
> belief they have the patient's permission, nor a clear necessity 
> to access the records (and I'm leaving that undefined, but among 
> others include the clean-up team after Shipman)
> 
> to what extent would a robust system that informed each patient 
> of every access to their records giving the name and declared 
> justification of the person seeing the contents, and an 
> indication of what they had seen alleviate the situation?

Provided that there was a robust and credible framework of discipline,
prosecution and punishment if this showed up abuse, yes.

> Proper access is another matter, but the difference between 
> proepr and improper access is that people making proper access 
> don't mind if the person concerned knows about it.

An excellent definition.  It's very hard to imagine legitimate access,
even under the most loose definition of legitimate, that the subject of
the data would object to.  I suspect there are exceptions in law
enforcement, but Simon might be able to comment on how often that
arises.  And warranted reading of data isn't the concern here (largely),
it's the routine snooping my officialdom.

> and that most of us feel at least a fleeting desire to bounce up 
> and down a few times on J Smith's nuts, and possibly ascertain 
> whether the other party was fully cognisant with the uses to 
> which his authority was being put.  (He is, I think, at least if 
> he reads his mail).

Quite.

But leave the nut bouncing out for today, eh?

ian