Doctors breaching patient privacy: Orwell redux

Suthers, Graeme K; McCusker, Elizabeth A; Wake, Samantha A

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2011.tb03169.x

Topics

To the Editor: Handelsman and colleagues raise concerns1 about medical confidentiality with regard to legislation in New South Wales and a recent National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guideline. We wish to correct some of their statements related to the NHMRC guideline.

1 SA Clinical Genetics Service, Adelaide, SA.
2 NSW Huntington Disease Service, Sydney, NSW.
3 Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Melbourne, VIC.

Correspondence: graeme.suthers@health.sa.gov.au

Competing interests:

All authors were on the NHMRC committee that drafted the guidelines.2

1. Handelsman DJ, Turner LA, Conway AJ. Doctors breaching patient privacy: Orwell redux. Med J Aust 2011; 194: 403-404. <MJA full text>
2. National Health and Medical Research Council and Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Use and disclosure of genetic information to a patient’s genetic relatives under section 95AA of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Guidelines for health practitioners in the private sector. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2009. http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/file/publications/synopses/e96.pdf (accessed May 2011).
3. Suthers GK, McCusker EA, Wake SA. Alerting genetic relatives to a risk of serious inherited disease without a patient’s consent. Med J Aust 2011; 194: 385-386. <MJA full text>
4. National Health and Medical Research Council. Medical genetic testing: information for health professionals. Canberra: NHMRC, 2010. http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/synopses/e99syn.htm (accessed May 2011).
5. Australian Law Reform Commission and Australian Health Ethics Committee. Essentially yours: the protection of human genetic information in Australia. Sydney: ALRC, 2003. (Report No. 96.) www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/alrc/publications/reports/96/index.html (accessed May 2011).

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