With these and other recent developments, Congress has begun to form legislation designed to protect medical-record privacy.
In the fall of 1995, two senators, Republican Robert Bennett (Utah) and Democrat Patrick Leahy (Vermont) introduced a bill that would provide a uniform national standard for protecting medical records.
The bill, called the Medical Records Confidentiality Act, intends to establish a set of uniform Federal rules for the use and disclosure of health records information, specifying who may see health records and under what circumstances.
There has been many supporters and critics of this new bill. The supporters feel that the bill would give patients greater privacy while the critics feel that the bill is too loose in its present interpretation and that it would actually be easier for unauthorized people to have access to medical records.
Presently the bill is in revision and is scheduled to return to the Senate in the Fall of 1996.