Confidentiality—Appropriate, but ...

TLDR: This issue describes a proposed rule that would require employers to make available all employee health records to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute of Occupational safety and Health (NIOSH).

Abstract: The confidential nature of the exchange of information between physician and patient is fundamental to the success of the medical encounter. Accordingly, except in those societies in which personal freedoms have been bankrupted in the service of political exigencies, this private character of personal medical data per se has seldom come under attack. Notwithstanding the general agreement as to the importance of confidentiality, medical data nevertheless exist within an increasingly complex health care delivery system buttressed by an equally esoteric, information science technology. Consequently, confidentiality of medical data has surfaced as an issue not in terms of the virtue of the concept but rather in terms of preservation of the concept. The most recent assault upon the preservation of the concept of confidentiality of medical data is exposed in the July 21, 1978, issue of the FederalRegister (43:31371). In this issue, a proposed rule entitled \"Access to Employee Exposure and Medical Records\" is described. This rule would, in effect, require employers to make available all employee health records to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Significantly, the proposed rule indicates the transfer of all employee health data, not only those data related to health hazard exposure or occupational health standards. If one considers the enormous attention given the issue of personal privacy over the past several years, in both the public and the private sector, one can only conclude that the OSHA and NIOSH administrators have recently been released from a time capsule or have returned from a 5-year vacation.