Why be so evasive?

I am constantly frustrated by the lack of good patient information on hospital websites. There are a couple of exceptions, but specifically the critical patient is concerned about hospitals that don't keep to the legal requirements for HIPAA.

HIPAA specified that hospitals with websites, MUST have a prominent link to an electronic version of their privacy notice, and that has to be written in, "plain language." Of course the Federal Government provides no formal definition of plain language, so you have to work that out. Generally, it seems to be accepted that plain language means that the notice should be readable by people who have completed grade 6 schooling. You can measure that by running a readability test.

There are several products out there to do this, including Microsoft word. I used a product that I purchased called Readability. That has a number of readability measurements available. If you are interested in what these are, then Google, "readability" and that will lead you to a technical discussion on the subject. I am not going to discuss it here.

I took a survey of every hospital in New Hampshire, and a couple in Massachusetts, in July 2006, and found that NONE of them met the plain language requirement. Of the hospitals surveyed, only 80% met the requirement to have a link to their notice. Why is this? I don't get it.

Now this is a case where the Government is NOT to blame, because they have posted a variety of simple notices on the HHS OCR website, but hospitals just ignored them. Very dissapointing.

So what can the critical patient do? Well, one thing to do is to let your hospital administrator know the law, and make them aware that they are in transgression. That usually gets their attention.

Secondly, make yourself aware of the regulations, and what the hospital can do with your information. The worst one I came across was the hospital who could make your information available to anyone who worked or volunteered in the hospital. Now volunteers are great people, and so are janitors, but I am not so sure that I want them having access to my personal health information. Do you?

So check the details of where your information resides, and let the hospital know if you agree or don't. It is their responsibility to keep your information private and confidential. Make sure that you keep their toes to the fire on that one.

With the advent of all this information about healthcare, one of the big dangers is losing track of information, and allowing Mrs. Smith next door to have a look at your latest blood test results. Hmmmm.

Be healthy,


Foster.