AMA Releases Universal Guidelines for Ethics and Medical Privacy

The Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association ("AMA") released ethical guidelines for physicians, hospitals, and health plans to protect the confidentiality of medical records. The report, "The Domain of Health Care Information Privacy," created by the Institute's Ethical Force ("E-Force") Program, lists more than thirty expectations within eight content areas for protecting individuals' privacy. The report's recommendations represent a consensus of the E-Force Program's Oversight Body, whose members are drawn from organized medicine, patient advocacy groups, healthcare delivery organizations, business, unions, government, ethics experts, and accrediting bodies. The AMA stated that the E-Force report will be used to create performance measures, which will be field-tested to ensure that they are useable and valid, and then released for voluntary use in self-assessment and other quality assurance and quality improvement programs.

Read the AMA's press release and link to the report.