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EHR privacy report: Other countries top U.S. in patient control

EHR Connection, March 19, 2007

Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are far ahead of the United States in creating and adopting privacy policies that allow patients to have more control over their health information, according to a new report commissioned by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Coauthor Joyce Pritts said that in all three countries she studied, the pressure to develop privacy controls came from the European Privacy Directive.

The report looked at Canada Health Infoway, the country's IT support program; the Pan-Canadian Privacy Framework; and privacy protection programs and technology in three provinces. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service is working to establish a central database to store individual demographic data and health summaries with links to more comprehensive health records kept by providers. Patients in the Netherlands can completely opt out of participating in the electronic health data exchange and can ask providers to conceal certain information in their health records, according to the report.

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