As the economic stimulus plan hits Congress for a vote, I can not help but think about the $20B that is being allocated to creating a healthcare IT infrastructure. To be sure, it will not be perfect and there are concerns about the choices that are available in the marketplace and the interoperability issues. But isn’t it a step in the right direction? We operate in a health system that is disconnected, disjointed and frankly, dangerous. Patients lives are at risk everyday that we continue to operate in silos and off of paper based systems.

I consider myself to be a common sense and reasonable individual so when I read this article in The New York Times entitled “Groups Push for Health IT Privacy Safeguards”, I was amazed about a specific comment in the article from Senator Patrick Leahy of VT. The Senator states “If you don’t have adequate safeguards to protect privacy, many Americans aren’t going to seek medical treatment. Health-care providers who think there’s a privacy risk … are going to see that as inconsistent with their professional obligations, and they won’t want to participate.” One question: have you seen your physician’s office lately? Filing cabinate after filing cabinet filled with patient charts available for anyone to access. Let’s be real here for a moment. The spirit of HIPAA is to safeguard patient privacy not hide behind it as a roadblock towards moving our healthsystem into the 21st century. If Health-care providers think there is a privacy risk with Health IT systems, I wonder whether they understand the risk of the reems of paper that they have sitting in manilla folders on receptionist’s desks, in filing bins etc.