The World Privacy Forum today filed its comments on the proposed changes to the HIPAA privacy rule, supporting some proposed changes and suggesting additional changes to enhance patient choice. In particular, the WPF supports the new patient right to an access report that has been added (p. 4), and has requested that Health Information Exchanges also be required to provide accountings of disclosures to patients (p. 18). The WPF generally argued that HHS needs to look forward and allow changes in information technology to fully benefit patients by providing the facility for more accounting rather than less (pp. 2-3). If the HIPAA rule gives patients a greater ability to monitor how their information is used and disclosed, patients will pay attention and requests for accounting of disclosures will become more common.

Online privacy — Executive director Pam Dixon will be speaking about online privacy and consumers at the Digiday Data Management Summit on Monday, July 18.

HIPAA opened for comment — The US Department of Health and Human Services has opened sections of the HIPAA rule for comments. All members of the public may comment on the proposed changes to the rule. Comments are due by August 1.

Privacy tip — If you have a Facebook account and if you have ever been tagged in a photo of yourself on Facebook, we want to alert you to an important Facebook setting. Unless you have proactively changed your privacy settings, Facebook will use facial recognition tools to compare photos and make tag suggestions. When new photos that look like you have been uploaded, Facebook will suggest tags with your name. To opt out of this, in Facebook go to Account, then choose Privacy Settings from the drop down menu. Click the Customize Settings link, and then scroll down and look for the Suggest Photos of Me to Friends line. To opt out, click Edit Settings, then choose Disable on the drop down menu.

Medical ID theft update — The World Privacy Forum is quoted in a Marketplace story regarding our most recent medical identity theft research. WPF wrote the first major research on medical ID theft and coined the term. Our consumer resources for detecting, preventing, and resolving the crime are located here.