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CDT Paper: Rethinking the Role of Consent in Protecting Health Information Privacy

CDT today released a major policy paper intended to move the health privacy debate from its outdated focus on patient consent to a comprehensive framework that will provide more effective privacy protection. CDT is advocating for the inclusion of privacy protections in the President’s economic stimulus bill, which contains at least $20 billion for a national health information technology network. CDT’s paper argues that personal health information should easily flow for treatment, payment, and certain core administrative tasks without requiring patient consent, but that stricter limits need to be placed on marketing and other secondary uses.