How Will HIPAA Affect Your Consumer Health Information Services?

Abstract

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is forcing medical centers in the United States to scrutinize how individually identifiable patient information is kept and transferred. The jury is still out on whether medical-center-based consumer health information services are considered “covered entities” under HIPAA. However, the ethical codes of the American Library Association, the Medical Library Association, and many other professional organizations specify patron confidentiality as an important value of the library profession. Consumer health library staff should use the recent emphasis on privacy as a cue to determine where, and under what circumstances, patrons' personal and topical information is less secure than it should be.