istrative law judge upheld the policy. While this ruling only affected Minnesota, it has possible far-reaching consequences for the rest of the country if other states are successful at obtaining the same type of ruling. Although a federal medical privacy rule exists as part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the federal rule does not apply to public health officials. Thus it is legal for public health officials to collect information that can clearly be traced to individuals without the consent or even knowledge of the individuals involved (Mitchell, 2002).
There are several disadvantages with this. First, as consumers become more aware of the situation, they may well filter the information that they give to their healthcare provider. If the state can collect information that can be traced to them and then release that information, patients may refrain from seeking appropriate medical care, or may lie about their conditions to physicians. In either case, public health is compromised. In addition, once information is made available to the state, there are slight limitations on how public health officials can disseminate that information. Thus data can be made available to pharmaceutical companies who might target certain patients with marketing materials, or insurance companies might seek access to the information in order to deny some patients coverage and reduce their costs. So long as these companies can demonstrate that access to the database represents a public health issue, they may well gain access to private information (Kost, 2002).
ELECTRONIC MONITORING IN THE WORKPLACE
Monitoring employee activity in the workplace has taken place for as long as there have been employee-employer relationships. Some companies allow employees to use telephones to make long distance phone calls, for example, only if the employees pay for the calls, and use the telephone bills as a way to collect...