Introduction

The term ‘privacy’ and ‘confidentiality’ is important in the fiduciary relationship between a doctor and a patient. This relationship of trust arises when the fair expectation of mutual trust is there between the doctor and his patients. Medical confidentiality is a concept of doctors maintaining all the information received during the course of the patient’s treatment.

About Confidentiality and privacy in healthcare

The patient’s confidentiality regarding his/her treatment is of vital importance and should be protected. It is the right of an individual that his/her personal and medical information is kept private or confidential. Such delicate and confidential information about the individual should only be in between him and the doctor, physician, healthcare or health insurance company.

The medical information of the patient given to a health care provider shall not be divulged to others unless the patient gives his consent to disclose such information to others. The confidentiality of a patient should be maintained because the communication of personal information or records may create personal or professional problems while the patients depend on doctors to keep their medical information private.

Though it is very rare to keep the medical records or information completely undisclosed as the very common breach of confidentiality occurs when the doctors pass the medical information to others and refer it as one of their case studies. If this information gets published in professional journals, the identity of the patient is never disclosed and if it appears in any way then the patient has the right to sue.

Apart from the publishing of the case studies, one more threat or risk to the medical privacy is the fact that most of the medical bills are paid by the health insurance company so in that case, it is very difficult to keep the information secret as health records can be viewed by insurance companies as well as by the medical laboratories, researchers etc.