Privacy Must Die

It is time to admit that privacy in health care is dead. Confessing that privacy has passed on, while reporting a death is often very sad, has many benefits. Not only is the continued effort to ensure privacy protection futile, it costs a lot of time and money, undermines trust in the health care system, causes confusion that interferes with family needs and, most importantly, likely gets in the way of giving greater benefit to the sick, soon to be sick and those who are not yet born but who will also become ill.