PRIVACY
Privacy is the oldest hobby I can remember. I started collecting keys around my Kindergarten years. I had collected several hundred by the year’s end. I had no particular intent to do anything in particular with the keys as far as I remember, but something about them represented endless possibilities.
Since then I’ve acquired basic lock-picking skills and an over 30 year history of personal experience trying to open locked doors and look behind them both literally and figuratively.
This experience has helped me understand how things can stay private yet permanent in a digital age using modern cryptographic technology.
I think that HIPAA and its interpretation since its inception have primarily served to inhibit fluid and natural communication between health care professionals and each other as well as between us and our patients.
This is all to say that in all of my work, privacy is primary, above and beyond what HIPAA and my duty as a physician dictate. That said, I disagree with what HIPAA considers to be “secure communication,” and I use whatever tools my patients and I prefer (iMessage and/or Signal and/or WhatsApp generally preferred).