BALANCING PUBLIC HEALTH AND PATIENTS' INFORMATION PRIVACY RIGHTS THROUGH ANALYZING CLINICAL REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Tseng, Chin-Po
Abstract
It is especially meaningful to discuss and debate infectious diseases in Taiwan. From a historical standpoint, Taiwan has never been able to escape from the threat of infectious diseases. Globalization and an internationally-oriented economic market have taken the situation from bad to worse. We still haven’t fully recovered from the SARS experience, and now the current H1N1 epidemic is ravaging the world. It is essential to collect, process, and disseminate medical information of patients in order to control infectious diseases. It is for these exact reasons that we built up the clinical reporting system in the Communicable Disease Control Act. Infectious disease regulation and information privacy of patients are however, inherently conflicting in this system. Inappropriate government actions will lead most patients to become reluctant to access medical systems. It will, additionally, affect the accuracy of information that the government collects. In the long run, it will have destructive impacts on public health.
Horizontally, this article used the United States as a comparative target to benchmark its judicial decisions, the Freedom of Information Act in 1966, Privacy Act in 1974, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996, and Model State Public Health Privacy Act in 1999. Vertically, in order to harmonize the domestic and international legal standards, this article also takes International Health Regulation 2005, OECD guidelines in 1980, and EU Directive in 1995 into consideration.
After analyzing the current clinical reporting system, this article points out the dilemmas of this system: namely the value conflicts between public health and information privacy. It emerges from several aspects: unconstitutional anxiety, distributional injustice, over-focus on public interest, and breach of confidentiality between the physician and the patient. From abstract ideas to pragmatic methods, this article suggests that we should re-distribute risks, put more attention on human right values, protect physician and patient relationships, harmonize the conflict between public health and information privacy by implementing due process of law, and building information security measures.
The core idea of this article is that patients’ information privacy protection plays a significant role in infectious disease control policy. They are in a mutually reinforcing relationship which means that patients’ information privacy protection will facilitate the result of infectious disease control. The administrator should recognize that patients are victims rather than criminals. In many ways, they can even be considered as casualties in the development of technology and its affect on civilization. The main purpose for curing is to save people from suffering. Besides “curing” diseases, “care” towards fellow man is just as important. Policy-makers should make decisions based more on compassion than punishment.
Subjects
CLINICAL REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
PUBLIC HEALTH
CONFIDENTIALITY BETWEEN THE PHYSICIAN AND THE PATIENT
JUDICIAL REVIEW
SDGs
Type
thesis
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