Friday, April 3, 2009

DCRI's Kevin Schulman addresses ownership of medical information in editorial
By Kelly Winget, DCRI Communications

With increased national focus on using electronic health information systems, there has also been an increase in the debate to determine who owns the medical information. The uncertainty about who owns electronic health information remains a significant legal challenge to really integrating a patient's information from various clinicians and hospitals via a comprehensive electronic medical record system.

The DCRI's Kevin Schulman, MD, co-authored an editorial addressing this issue that appeared in the March 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act provides some guidance but doesn't address the varied legal concerns. For example, clinicians can provide a patient's medical records to other clinicians for treatment purposes, and patients can have access to the information in their records but they cannot keep or destroy the original documents.

The editorial addresses property rights, privacy, proprietary business concerns, and how to arrive at a possible solution. Click here to read the full article.