FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 349:309 July 17, 2003 Number 3 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear PubMed Citation

To the Editor: Although the goal of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is to protect patients' privacy and rights, such protections, if either misunderstood or overzealously applied, could impede necessary communication and thereby negatively affect patient care and safety. One of the explicit exemptions to the requirement that patients authorize the release of protected health information deals with the use of such information for the provision of treatment. We report two intrusions into patients' treatment resulting from misinterpretations of HIPAA.

A patient between 50 and 70 years of age (exact age and sex withheld in . . . [Full Text of this Article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Pauker, S. G., Zane, E. M., Salem, D. N. (2005). Creating a Safer Health Care System: Finding the Constraint. JAMA 294: 2906-2908 [Full Text]  
• Dracup, K., Bryan-Brown, C. W. (2004). The Law of Unintended Consequences. Am J Crit Care 13: 97-99 [Full Text]