Privacy Policy and HIPPA -Sometimes we start off on the wrong foot

My foot may one day help save the Nation. Or, maybe not.

Today, I went for an appointment at a Podiatrists' office to have a problem with my right foot examined; perhaps diagnosed and treated. I was told by the person who made the appointment for me over the phone that my health insurance coverage would pay for the visit.

I arrived ten minutes early to complete the requisite paper work that precedes any first time visit to any health care provider. I had my insurance ID cards photocopied. I was handed 5 pages of forms to complete, if I would be so kind.

I am, generally speaking, a pretty healthy individual for a 55 year old man who has been buffeted by life's indignities and disappointments from time to time. For most of my life I have been well fed and well cared for. There are no chronic illnesses and there have been no major injuries so there just wasn't much to write on the 12th generation xerox form that I was assigned to complete.

The last page asked me to verify with my signature that I had been given the opportunity to review the podiatrist's privacy policy (on the following page). Being the curious and skeptical sort who enjoys 'lifting the veil' from time to time I figured that I had enough time to actually skim, if not read, the policy. The fact that it was printed in itsy-bitsy 8-point type and went on for two tightly packed pages would not dissuade me.

Trust me, your doctor has one of these things too; every doctor you see. It is required by law that he have a written privacy policy and that he show it to you. He will get you to sign a form that says you have read it (or had a chance to) before he will put stethoscope to chest, poke that little ear-light thing into your ear or press your tongue down with a Popsicle stick.

If you are not an attorney who specializes in obfuscatory prose for the medical and insurance industries you will find yourself way too frustrated at the end of the second or third sentence to continue. Should you persist, you will then need another doctor - an optometrist - to help you with the eye trouble you have just brought upon yourself by reading the privacy policy and the optometrist will have a policy of his own that you must read and sign.

Now it would be funny if the optometrist's privacy policy started out with very large letters at the top that got smaller and smaller as the text ran down the page and you had to read it while covering one eye and standing twelve feet away. No such luck. They have no highly developed sense of humor or taste for irony, as I do.

So I dare to review the podiatrists' privacy policy not expecting much beyond the standard inscrutable boiler plate to which I have become accustomed. Soon I am reading just the names of each numbered provision. Number 14 (National Security) says that the doctor will release my personal, private, confidential health information to any authorized federal agency involved in national security who requests copies of said information.

I am surprised and delighted that it is within the realm of possibility that there is information about my right foot that might one day become crucial in winning the global war on terror. It makes me feel important and patriotic to be able to participate in the security of our nation, even in such a modest way. (If there was information about a pending terrorist attack would they have the authority to water-board my right foot? Maybe. Just maybe.)

The next provision (Number 15) was the most astonishing. It provided for the release of my confidential, personal, private medical information (to the extent that it was in the possession of my podiatrist) for the purpose of protecting the life of the President of the United States of America! Now I felt like I could not trust my right foot at all, even a little bit, and I might never take off that shoe for fear that Barack Obama's life might be endangered. This was my beloved car-driving foot and soccer-ball-kicking foot and to think that one day it might try to harm the President! I like the President. What does that damn right foot of mine have against him?

When I then found out from the office receptionist that my insurance would NOT in fact cover the office visit because I was over the age of 21 and Podiatric care was not covered for me I wept. I was so relieved to not have to think about the need for x-rays of my foot in preventing the next 9/11 or the next assassination in the balcony in Ford's Theater.

This is an entirely true story and I have not fabricated one tiny bit of it. If you doubt me, try to read the privacy policy at your doctor's office on your next visit and see if there's a chance your prostate exam or pap smear or colonoscopy might one day be called upon to save the free world. And you better give permission for release of that information or the terrorists will win.

The doctor will see you now.