¶ … Health Information Privacy Legislation The relevance of protecting the personal health information of the residents of Prince Edward Island (PEI) cannot be overstated. Towards that end, I propose that you introduce legislation that would protect as well as limit access to the individually identifiable health information of residents of the province. Such legislation should ideally address who can have access to or receive a consumer's health information. As you may already know, in Canada, the privacy of consumers "is protected at the federal level by the Privacy Act…and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)" (Kristoffersson, Schmidtke and Cassiman, 2010). Prince Edward Island (PEI) unlike other provinces in Canada has no health privacy legislation in place.

In basic terms, patient privacy according to Kirch (2008) "is the right and desire of a person to control the disclosure of personal health information." With no health information privacy legislation in place, some employers would seek to utilize the personal medical information of employees for decision making purposes. In the words of Plasencia (1999), concerns "…that disclosure of sensitive medical information could result in loss of employment and insurance relate to the growing importance attached to privacy and confidentiality." Further, it is also important to note that some employers could be tempted to use job applicants' health information in the job selection process. For example, an employer who has unrestricted access to the personal health information of a job applicant could find that the said applicant has hypertension...

In that regard, PEI needs to have health information privacy legislation in place so as to protect employees from unfair discrimination based on their perceived inability to perform as a result of a medical condition.
Secondly, by introducing the health information privacy legislation, you will essentially be responding to the wishes of health care consumers. Indeed, in the opinion of Kirch (2008), consumers today are increasingly becoming convinced that their health information should be accorded some level of privacy. As the author further points out, "there is increasing public concern over the potential for release of personal data, especially regarding computer-based systems." With that in mind, there is a need to reassure residents of the province about the safety of their health information/data by having in place the relevant legislation.

Next, as Gostin (2008) points out, in addition to economic harm, breach of privacy can also occasion psychological and even social harm. In that regard, there exists a need to protect the interests of those whose careers and/or reputations would be irreversibly damaged were their health information to be leaked to the public. Individuals in this category include but they are not limited to entertainers, politicians, sports personalities, etc. (Kirch, 2008). Some of the sensitive information whose release to the media or otherwise would be devastating to some of those mentioned above includes information having to do with STDs, HIV status, abortion, drug…