New Bill undermines privacy of women's health information
Green Party Health spokesperson Sue Kedgley said she was alarmed at the proposal to allow automatic access to women's
sensitive medical records without their consent, contained in amendments to the Health (Screening Programmes) Amendment
Bill, which was tabled in Parliament today.
Ms Kedgley said the proposal undermined the privacy of personal health information and the approach to privacy issues
that New Zealand has taken over recent years.
"It undermines the confidentiality, and therefore the basis of trust, in the GP-patient relationship," Ms Kedgley said.
"It provides a precedent for further undermining the privacy of personal health information in New Zealand."
Health information has long been recognised as being highly sensitive. It includes intimate details about an
individual's body, lifestyle and behaviour.
Ms Kedgley said many consumer groups had expressed great concern at such a proposal, when it was mooted last year, and
she could not understand why the rest of the committee had not listened to women's concerns on the issue.
"Under the amendments, sensitive records on sexually transmitted infections, terminations or sexual abuse, could be
accessed by screening programme evaluators," she said.
Ms Kedgley said there was a danger, if the amendments passed through Parliament, that they would provoke a backlash
against the National Cervical Screening Programme, and a reduction of the numbers of women enrolled on the NCSP, as
women opted out of the programme because they did not want their primary health care records being accessed by an
unspecified number of evaluators.
Ms Kedgley said the Green Party believed that consent should always be sought before personal health care records were
accessed. She said she believed that the vast majority of women would consent to be on the NCSP, providing that the
confidentiality and security of sensitive health information was assured.