The Outsourcing of Private Medical Information Offshore

The Outsourcing of Private Medical Information Offshore

The estimated $20 billion medical transcription industry[1] turns a doctor’s audio notes into an electronic record. These notes could contain diagnosis, x-ray analysis or a myriad of information essential for communication between healthcare providers[2]. It could also contain sensitive information such as whether a patient has cancer, a sexually transmitted disease, or some other information that the patient would like to keep private.

Transcription can be a costly, timely process; so much so that a great deal of this work is outsourced outside of the hospital to be processed. Of the work that is outsourced, an estimated 10%-20% of that is sent offshore according to the American Association for Medical Transcription[3]. This brings up the following questions: Is the patient’s right to privacy being violated by sending this transcription information offshore? Are these fundamental rights being shortchanged in the quest for profit and reducing cost? If so, what can be done to balance the security of these records?

An understanding of the medical transcription process and incidents involving privacy violations will aid in the answering these questions. Rich Bagby describes the transcription process and how outsourcing factors in:

At the end of the day, physicians routinely record their patient notes into a tape recorder or other recording device, depositing the resulting medium at the hospital's transcription department. Since most in-house records departments are not 24/7 operations, there is no action on the patient data until the next morning, when the transcription staff types up the information in the tapes. When the transcription is complete, the st...

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...ara Baase. A Gift of Fire. Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computers and the Internet. 2003. Pg 406.

[9] Baase. Pg 406.

[10] Judy Holland. “Privacy issues develop over work done overseas.” Hearst Newspapers. April 18, 2004.

[11] United Nations, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, General Assembly resolution 217 A (III), December 10, 1948.

[12] McDougall, Paul. “Prove It's Secure”. InformationWeek. March 23, 2004.

[13] Paul McDougal. “California Legislator Wants To Bar Offshore Outsourcing Of Medical And Financial Records.” Information Week. March 10, 2004.

[14] Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International. Privacy and Human Rights 2003. 2003.

[15] John Ribeiro. “Indian law may satisfy EU data protection concerns.” Infoworld. April 21, 2004.

[16] McDougal, “California Legislator Wants To Bar Offshore….”.