Do you know who has access to your health records? From diagnoses and prescriptions to test results and treatment plans, these records tell a deeply personal story — which is why health record privacy protections were a central part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) when it was passed in 1996.
Decades of progress in digitizing healthcare records have made that information more useful: helping patients manage their health, physicians make informed decisions, and care teams coordinate across offices and hospitals. In the truly electronic age, it should be a simple matter to share that information among providers. But making records easier to share also raises several fundamental questions: Who should be able to see them, under what circumstances, and how do we strike a balance between accessibility and privacy?
