New medical privacy laws

New medical privacy laws have gone into effect recently.  It used to be that at my pharmacy, when one picked up a prescription, a sticker printed with your name, the date, and the medicine name was affixed to a clipboard.  A little box was provided for you to sign for receipt.  A little glance upwards was all that was required to see the names — and prescriptions — of the people in line ahead of you.  No longer is this permitted.  Likewise, at the the medical testing facility where I have gone to have blood drawn, your name and the prescribed tests were written on a sheet that anyone visiting the office could see.  This, too, is now forbidden.

The overall point — the protection of personal information — has not necessarily sunk into everyone’s heads yet.  My physician still hollers things across the office: “Could you check to see if Josh has received his second Hep B vaccine yet?”  And the techs at my pharmacy seem not to have grokked the gestalt yet.  To wit, a telephone conversation I just had:

Me:  Hi, I’m checking to see if I’ve forgotten to pick up any prescriptions.

Tech:  What’s the name?

Me:  McGee.  Joshua.

Tech:  The last thing I show is from the 19th.  Have you picked anything up since the 19th?

I suddenly wondered how much information she was ready to give out over the telephone.

Me:  Err, I don’t know, what was it I picked up on the 19th?

Tech:  No, it was a call from the 19th.  That was the Lorazepam.  Want me to check if you’ve picked it up yet?

Bingo.  That’s a psychotropic med, but they were comfortable revealing it to someone on the line who merely mentioned my name.  I was calling from work, so it’s not as if caller ID betrayed me.  And I’m sure there’s no chance she recognized my voice: that sort of service has pretty much disappeared, and I’ve only been using this pharmacy since March anyway.  I suspect I could have gotten more information from her: other meds, other dates, prescribing doctors.  Which makes one wonder, who really cares about those little stickers if I can get all of this over the telephone?  And what self-respecting private investigator would bother raiding your trash if this is all free for the asking?