Joller clashes with doctors over patient confidentiality

Social Affairs Minister Karmen Joller has clashed with the Estonian Medical Association over access to patient records, after the association warned that police and other state agencies can access health data, ERR reports.

The association said the doctor-patient relationship depends on trust and that protecting patient confidentiality is a core principle of medical ethics. Patients must be able to share health information with their doctors confident that it will not reach others, said association president Neeme Tõnisson.

The association called for access to health data through state information systems to be suspended unless patients consent. It said exceptions should be clearly defined by law and require court approval.

Joller said a legal amendment was already being prepared with the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs and would soon go to the government. She said TEHIK, the administrator of the health information system, had acted in accordance with current law. The Police and Border Guard Board had also changed its practices after some requests for health data were not sufficiently justified, she added.

The minister said security systems could only go so far and called on the association to address cases in which healthcare workers share patients’ health data on social media. She said patients must give written consent that can be reproduced when their stories are shared at conferences, training sessions or elsewhere. The consent should specify where, when and how their data will be used.

Joller also said healthcare workers must not disclose that a particular person is a patient of a particular doctor. She cited the Data Protection Inspectorate’s view that patient confidentiality covers all information learned about a person during treatment, not only a diagnosis. Data can be disclosed only with the patient’s consent or a clear legal basis, she said, adding that she had asked the inspectorate to assess some doctors’ conduct and questioned why the association had not done so itself.