CA bill requiring providers to name HIV patients worth privacy risk
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, May 9, 2005
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A bill pending in the California legislature would require healthcare providers (including doctors and medical laboratories) to report cases of HIV infection to county health officials by patient name, as they already do with AIDS, changing the current code-based reporting method.
Some worry that this violates patients' privacy. Others-including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-argue that reporting by name is worth the risk, particularly because it's more accurate and more cost-effective, according to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times.
In addition, in 2006, the federal government will allocate HIV/AIDS funding to states based on the number of reported HIV cases, according to the editorial. So without the "verification" that name-based reporting offers, states could lose necessary funding for research in this area.
Currently, more than half of the states in the United States report HIV patients by name to their public health departments. Senator Nell Soto (D-Pomona) sponsored the CA bill.
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