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April 8, 2008, 12:37 pm
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If it is as easy putting on a white coat and walking into a hospital to get your hands on a celebs hospital records, I hope we never go to online health records.

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said this morning that the snooping into his wife's medical records by an unauthorized UCLA Medical Center employee follows a long history of such intrusions on California's first couple.

"I have been a victim of this in my own hospital visits," Schwarzenegger said at a news conference to promote volunteerism, "if it was for heart surgery or hip surgery, shoulder surgery, all of those things."

More of the story can be found at

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-arnold8apr08,1,7358634.story

It's sad that healthcare workers are abusing the every day privilege they have on the job.

Patients are supposed to be able to trust their healthcare providers - this includes those who work for them.

Your health records is really your personal business, so I agree that stringent controls needs to be implemented to ensure that these records remain confidential and only used by authorized personnel.

Health records are private, and should be guarded more safely. In this day in age with identity theft running ramped, who knows what kind of damage a criminal could do with that type of information.

I agree as well. This information is private and people have no right to see someone else's medical records or history.

Here is an example of a bad scenario:

If you were a public figure and you were allergic to shellfish. Then you went to eat at a restaurant that has an employee doesn't agree with your way of life or opinions.

He could very easily try and take you out by adding a little shellfish to your diet without you knowing. I know thinking like this is going a little overboard but I would definitely be worried about a scenario like this.

I wish there could be a way of guaranteeing that our records be totally private. I don't see how it can be done though, what with everything on computers now, and there are always people out there who know how to break into secure places.

I also would like that the health care company we use can't let our secrets be used against us. Once the companies have a record that we have an illness, or we have taken a test to see if we are prone to a disease, then the results can be used against us by the industry itself.

All a company needs is one person on their paycheck who could get into the main computer. Then suddenly our premiums go up or we can be dropped by the company and they can blame something else as the reason.

Still, I can't think of a way to make certain we keep our privacy.