Normally, a website can monetize your data however it likes, as long as it follows its own privacy policy and terms of service. Or, you watch a YouTube video where a medical doctor doles out advice on preventing diabetes, issuing the same tips they’d provide at an office visit. Let’s say you use Psychology Today to find a therapist, to learn how your medications interact, or WebMD to frantically look up cardiac symptoms at three in the morning. You can use these links to jump to any section: web searches, smartwatches, drugstores, vaccination status, period trackers and other health apps, doctor visits, health insurers, miscarriages, phone location data, and court orders. Then we’ll also cover scenarios that are particularly confusing, and could be of special concern to anyone looking for reproductive healthcare. We’ll start with commonplace situations that apply to millions of people every day. This should help you make informed choices about seeking healthcare and medical advice. It’s important to understand how the law works if you’re concerned about your information being shared with advertisers or other companies.Īs states tighten abortion restrictions and the Supreme Court weighs an abortion ruling, you may also fear that seeking guidance on ending a pregnancy, or even getting treatment during a miscarriage, might lead to unwanted attention from the police, prosecutors, or activists.īelow are a number of scenarios involving consumers’ health information, with guidance on whether HIPAA protects their privacy in each case. “We should have strong protections for all sensitive health data, but the law hasn’t caught up.” “It’s a failure of policy-making that people’s expectations about health data don’t match the actual regulations,” says Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports. I’ve been writing about HIPAA for years, and more often than not when someone mentions a situation where they think the law protects their privacy, they’re wrong. However, the same piece of information that’s protected at a doctor’s office can be totally unregulated in other settings.
It does lay out privacy rules for health care providers and insurance companies to follow when they handle personally identifiable medical data. The law, which was enacted in 1996, was largely concerned with issues like helping people maintain health insurance when they change jobs. “People think that it’s sensitive data, and therefore it’s protected, but that’s just not true.”
“HIPAA doesn’t actually protect medical data” in all circumstances, says Anna Slomovic, a data management and policy consultant whose specialties include health privacy. Many people believe that HIPAA creates special protections for any information related to your health, but that is not the case.
Unfortunately, one of the most common things you hear is a misconception. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is described on forms at the doctor it’s referenced in privacy policies it’s even mentioned on the news.
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