HealthLeaders Media reports on a case where a medical patient’s privacy was violated:

Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, FL, has disciplined several employees for taking cell phone pictures of a shark attack victim who later died, and has asked anyone with copies of the photos to destroy them.

The disciplinary actions included written warnings, suspension, and demotion to loss of position, but nobody was fired, the hospital said in a media release. “Ultimately, we have determined that these inappropriate actions were taken by good people who exercised poor judgment,” said the hospital in a prepared statement. Read more »

National Public Radio has a story about medical identity theft  and how it can affect an individual’s safety and privacy:

These days, most people know the drill for dealing with a stolen credit card number — call the card company and have the account canceled.

But experts say a different type of identity theft is on the rise — one that could compromise both the victim’s credit and physical safety. Patients using someone else’s name, Social Security number or insurance card to get health care could risk their victim’s health if inaccurate information, such as blood type and medications, is recorded on the victim’s chart. [...]

Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, has been trying to raise awareness about this crime for years now. Read more »

Slate has an interesting story about how improved DNA testing has made it more difficult for sperm donors to remain anonymous:

In an age of sophisticated genetic testing, the concept of anonymity is rapidly fading. With some clever sleuthing—tests that can track down ancestral origins, donor numbers, and bits of biographical information—parents and offspring can find out the donors. “With DNA testing and Google, there’s no such thing as anonymity anymore,” says Wendy Kramer, the founder of the Donor Sibling Registry. “Donors are choosing anonymity because they’re not educated,” adds Kramer. “If they were properly educated on the consequences, then many would choose not to donate.” [...] Read more »

Tech Daily Dose reports that the Center for Digital Democracy, headed by Jeff Chester, has submitted a filing (pdf) to the Food and Drug Administration that blasted how these [pharmaceutical] companies advertise online.”

The FDA had requested comments, due this week, on how companies promote FDA-regulated medical products using the Internet, including social media sites. The Internet has “raised questions and concerns over how to apply existing regulations to promotion in these newer media,” according to the FDA’s background on its proceeding. In particular, the Web has created challenges for figuring out how to state mandatory information, such as a drug’s side effects.

Chester’s group pushed beyond these compliance concerns to raise questions about how pharmaceutical companies might use online marketing tools to prey on consumer anxieties. “Few U.S. health consumers are aware that they are being identified, labeled, profiled, and tracked on the Internet while they search or access information on specific conditions or concerns,” CDD’s statement said.

In its filing, CDD also made recommendations for next steps the FDA could take: Read more »

Last year, Oklahoma passed a controversial new abortion law (pdf); one of the law’s provisions required the online posting of personal details of women who had undergone the procedure, a violation of the women’s privacy rights. An Oklahoma County District Court judge has ruled as unconstitutional the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act (Oklahoma House Bill 1595), but not for privacy or civil liberties reasons. Instead, Judge Daniel Owens said the law violated the state’s “single-subject rule,” which requires that each law cover only one subject, ABC News reports. The lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights said the Act had four subjects: redefining multiple abortion-related terms used in Oklahoma law; banning gender-selective abortion; establishing reporting requirements; and creating new responsibilities for the state Department of Health, state Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision, and state Board of Osteopathic Examiners.

There are several controversial provisions in the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, including several reporting requirements. One of them mandated doctors require women seeking abortions to fill out a highly invasive questionnaire, then pass the information to the state health department. Doctors not fulfilling the Act’s requirements faced criminal sanctions and loss of their medical licenses.

The state would have created a new Web site to publish answers to the required questionnaire. The 37 questions include: Read more »

A few months ago, Texas announced that, as part of a lawsuit settlement agreement with the Texas Civil Rights Project, it would destroy five million blood samples taken from babies without their parents’ consent, a tactic that raised substantial privacy questions. Now, the Texas Tribune has learned, Texas officials also “were turning over hundreds of dried blood samples to the federal government to help build a vast DNA database.”

A Texas Tribune review of nine years’ worth of e-mails and internal documents on the Department of State Health Services’ newborn blood screening program reveals the transfer of hundreds of infant blood spots to an Armed Forces lab to build a national and, someday, international mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) registry. The records, released after the state agreed in December to destroy more than 5 million infant blood spots, also show an effort to limit the public’s knowledge of aspects of the newborn blood program, and to manage the debate around it. But the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit never saw them, because the state settled the case so quickly that it never reached the discovery phase.

DSHS spokeswoman Carrie Williams says that while the department’s general philosophy was to save blood spots for public health research, “we did not have an exclusive policy.” She says DSHS participated in the project because officials believed it would help in missing-persons cases — and knew the blood spots could not be linked back to a particular individual. [...] Read more »