Word: patients
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...Pavel Janícek, 42, unemployed, with a history of mental illness and suicide attempts, burned himself in Velká Chyska on April 8. His partner told police that Janícek had feared a prison sentence he was about to serve. Two others, a 31-year-old psychiatric patient in Opava and a 20-year-old developmentally disabled man from Policka, ignited themselves but survived. Another man, 42 and unemployed, tried to kill himself by bicycling up to a gas station in Boskovice, then pumping his pockets with 50?-worth of diesel. It failed to catch fire...
...sounds like a good idea - none of us likes to think of our employers finding out about, say, that sensitive little flare-up back in '87 - but some doctors groups are up in arms over the legislation, saying it keeps them from freely communicating with their patients, and from efficiently partnering with other physicians to maximize patient care. Health care providers who violate the new rules are subject to criminal charges, jail time and up to $250,000 in fines...
...Meanwhile, patient advocacy groups are suing in a Philadelphia court to overturn the privacy laws, saying they actually allow all the wrong people (insurance companies, for example), access to medical files. And then there's the matter of cost: no matter where you come down on the law, it's an expensive proposition: doctors' offices around the country have spent thousands on overtime for staff training and compliance courses; and estimates of nation-wide costs of implementation run as high as $22 billion...
...specifically permit people to see your records. Before HIPAA, mental health treatments were monitored by health care plans in order to keep control of costs - someone from the health plan would analyze records to ensure treatment was still necessary. Now, that decision will be left up to the patient and the treating physician...
Also, he said doctors often prescribe care simply based on the race of the patient instead of individual symptoms...