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.