Medical data privacy: automated interference with contractual relations.
John J Fargo · PubMed · 1976
Consider the following episode, related by a practicing physician: My recognition of the need to protect the confidentiality of medical records probably stems from a day 37 years ago when I saw a chief medical record librarian at the Cleveland Clinic chase someone out of her record room.The individual so speedily dispatched was an insurance company representative seeking access to a medical record without authorization.Rumsey, supra note 4, at 23.Consider also the situation in Berry v. Moench, 8 Utah 2d 191, 331 P.2d 814 (1958), in which a physician felt compelled to write a letter to the parents of his former patient's fiancee urging that the marriage not take place.In the course of the letter the physician referred to his former patient as a "schizophrenic."6. Given the datamania in our society, information about people is valuable, especially if it is derogatory.Credit grantors, employers, detective agencies, insurance companies, political operators, and governmental investigators will pay for it or, on occasion, steal it.Miller, supra note 2, at 57. 7. See A. R. MILLER, THE ASSAULT ON PRIVACY: COMPUTERS, DATA BANKS, AND DOSSIERS 43-47 (1971).The prospect of gaining access to a large store of concentrated information may prompt greater efforts to gain such access through bribery or through information sharing on a "buddy system."Even if we assume that the cost of securing access to computerized "dirt" is higher than the cost of dredging out the dirt in a more traditional form of record, the centralized quality and compactness of a computerized dossier creates an incentive to invade it because the payoff for doing so successfully may be sufficiently large that the cost per unit of computerized "dirt" actually will prove to be lower than the cost per unit of uncomputerized "dirt." A. R. Miller, The Right of Privacy: Data Banks and Dossiers, in PRIVACY IN A FREE