From: "Adrian Midgley" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:08 AM
> On Wednesday 19 May 2004 07:33, Laurie Slater wrote:
>
> > Security is a prerequisite for confidentiality.
>
> I suppose it often is, but hippocrates had it adequately well sorted out -
> don't talk about anything you learn that shouldn't be.
>
> IE one may have total confidentiality in the complete absence of any
secure
> systems for communicating by _not_ communicating.
Good to see a consideration of first principles. We are already getting
patients asking for certain information not to be recorded on the computer
but the problem is we don't keep paper records. now (maybe we should). The
problem is that everyone assumes that the record is complete and therefore
may miss significant matters if they don't ask every time (which sort of
negates the reason for having records). Maybe we should stop and ask what is
the purpose of medical records.
--
Fay
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