Two US bills have proposed further regulation of
shipping medical information overseas for analysis, requiring that
patients be informed when their information is sent to another
country.
Both bills cover broader ground than just healthcare, touching
on privacy protection for financial and tax return information, but
medical providers say that the additional restrictions on health
information may make providing basic services more difficult.
Radiology is, increasingly, being shipped offshore, said
Jonathan Linkous, executive director of the American Telemedicine
Association, but not as a cost-savings tool. Instead, he said, the
practice - often using US radiologists living overseas - has
allowed hospitals to get reads at times that might be
inconvenient.
"For obvious reasons, when it's midnight here, it's noon in
Sydney. This is not about outsourcing to get cheaper reads to screw
the patient," he said. "The only effect this [legislation] would
have is to hurt patient care."
At present radiology is controlled as tightly outside of the
hospital as inside it, and the qualifications of a radiologist
operating in another country can be no different than one in the
US. Other medical information is also protected by regulations.
Still, the proposed laws would not bar the practice but would
instead require patient consent. Jon Berger, a vice president at
NightHawk Radiology Services, an Illinois firm that uses US
board-certified radiologists in Sydney, believed the added step
would not be onerous. "I don't think it would really impact what we
do," he said.
Brian Reid writes for Health-IT World