Proposed medical record law redundant

In most cases, we support efforts to protect individual privacy, but a new bill to safeguard patient privacy is simply unnecessary.

Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, sponsored Assembly Bill 211 bill in light of recent disclosures that unauthorized employees at UCLA Medical Center had snooped into the private medical records of celebrities. The bill essentially extends government oversight over hospitals and increases punitive measures against individuals who violate privacy laws.

The centerpiece of the bill is the new Office of Health Information Integrity, which would review privacy violations and assess fines on individuals of $2,500 to $250,000, depending on the severity of the violation. The fines would go into a special “Quality Improvement” account to help fund privacy programs at hospitals.

The purpose of the bill is to improve enforcement of privacy violations, according to Robert Herrell, legislative director for Mr. Jones. California already has strict laws that authorize fines and penalties against people who obtain or disclose private medical information — these laws just aren't being enforced by county district attorneys or the state attorney general.

And this is exactly the point made by the skeptics. Barstow's State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, believes a better strategy for preventing privacy violations would be to make an example of the recent perpetrators by enforcing current laws, sending a message to all health care employees that privacy violations will not be tolerated.

Further, most health care centers already have or are implementing methods to prevent privacy violations. For example, UCLA Medical Center has set up worker education programs, computer safeguards and more audits after it was revealed that employees snooped into the medical records of pop singer Britney Spears and actress Farrah Fawcett.

Those episodes were clearly failures of the individuals as well as management and controls — not a failure of government oversight — and the failures are for UCLA to fix. Yet here comes government, with AB211 and another bureaucracy.

Mr. Herrell denies that the bill would create a new bureaucracy since the office would only include two or three employees. Yet that raises the question of how an office with only two or three officials could effectively oversee all of the health care centers, providers and employees in California. It couldn't. To enforce all of the details in the bill, the office would likely need more employees and a bigger operating budget.

Before making new privacy safeguards and punitive measures, the government should enforce the ones it already has.