New medical privacy laws
New medical privacy laws have gone into effect recently. It used to be that at my pharmacy, when one picked up a prescription, a sticker printed with your name, the date, and the medicine name was affixed to a clipboard. A little box was provided for you to sign for receipt. A little glance upwards was all that was required to see the names — and prescriptions — of the people in line ahead of you. No longer is this permitted. Likewise, at the the medical testing facility where I have gone to have blood drawn, your name and the prescribed tests were written on a sheet that anyone visiting the office could see. This, too, is now forbidden.
The overall point — the protection of personal information — has not necessarily sunk into everyone’s heads yet. My physician still hollers things across the office: “Could you check to see if Josh has received his second Hep B vaccine yet?” And the techs at my pharmacy seem not to have grokked the gestalt yet. To wit, a telephone conversation I just had:
Me: Hi, I’m checking to see if I’ve forgotten to pick up any prescriptions.
Tech: What’s the name?
Me: McGee. Joshua.
Tech: The last thing I show is from the 19th. Have you picked anything up since the 19th?
I suddenly wondered how much information she was ready to give out over the telephone.
Me: Err, I don’t know, what was it I picked up on the 19th?
Tech: No, it was a call from the 19th. That was the Lorazepam. Want me to check if you’ve picked it up yet?
Bingo. That’s a psychotropic med, but they were comfortable revealing it to someone on the line who merely mentioned my name. I was calling from work, so it’s not as if caller ID betrayed me. And I’m sure there’s no chance she recognized my voice: that sort of service has pretty much disappeared, and I’ve only been using this pharmacy since March anyway. I suspect I could have gotten more information from her: other meds, other dates, prescribing doctors. Which makes one wonder, who really cares about those little stickers if I can get all of this over the telephone? And what self-respecting private investigator would bother raiding your trash if this is all free for the asking?
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