Privacy and confidentiality

Protecting the privacy of patients' identifiable health information is the first topic the Ethical Force Oversight Body has addressed. In selecting this topic, the Oversight Body considered the rapid evolution of health care informatics and the potential that these advances have to both protect patient information and to allow rapid, massive, and possibly silent breaches of patient confidentiality.

When the evolution of potential health care informatics was assessed, and considered along with rising public concerns about health care privacy and the perception that there is a fundamental ethical obligation to carefully protect information given to health care providers in confidence and out of necessity, the Oversight Body felt that protecting privacy was a clear example of an ethical obligation that must span the entire health care system.

The Ethical Force Program
515 N. State Street
Chicago, IL 60610
Phone: (312) 464-5260
Fax: (312) 464-4613
EthicalForce@ama-assn.org