Stolen medical records  coastal writes "I saw the news on
Slashdot this morning that hundreds of thousands of medical
records belonging to Oregon patients were stolen.  The Slashdot
article is here: 37222& Scathing editorial here: /C426/L426
Unfortunately, poor data security procedures are probably fairly
common within the medical industry, except (I hope) in large
hospitals. With the coming rush to implement Electronic Medical
Records even in small physician practices, theft of data could
occur more frequently. EMR is an exciting technology, but I fear
that while giving better access, it will give patients less
privacy and less control over their own records. If we should
ever have such a system as a national EMR share system(and I
don't doubt that we could after billions of dollars and a couple
of decades) I see it being used as much by insurance companies
to deny claims based on pre-existing conditions, as much as it
would be used by doctors to assist in diagnosis, and by patients
to manage their own heal