Patients' rights in the doctor's office are now protected under a new federal law.

President George W. Bush and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have implemented new patient privacy rules to protect the rights of citizens to keep their medical records confidential. Bill Clinton, former president, first proposed the rules before he left office.

Shane Phillips (junior-agricultural business management) said privacy rules are necessary to protect a person's confidentiality.

"It seems kind of wrong that someone that has nothing to do with health care can have easy access to parts of someone's medical records," Phillips said.

Under the new rule, medical records will be more accessible to patients, who will have more control over how their personal information is used. Patient consent is now a requirement for non-routine and most non-health care purposes such as releasing information to financial institutions or insurance mailing lists.

It also gives patients the right to place restrictions on the uses and disclosure of their information, and requires doctors to obtain consent before sharing their treatment for health care operation purposes. To ensure a patient's rights are protected, violators would be subject to civil liability.

The new rules fill a gap in the protection of patients' rights and confidentiality and give patients a peace of mind knowing that their privacy is not vulnerable to intrusion, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a news release.

"This rule makes sure that private health information doesn't fall victim to the progress of the information and technology age, where an array of data is readily available in computer systems and too often just a keystroke away from being accessed," Thompson said.

The new rules also ease some of the paperwork patients and doctors have to work with. Before the new rules, patients had to go through a series of steps to find out information about their own medical records.

Current rules require written consent before health care providers can talk to each other about test results and decide how to treat the patient. Consent is also required if a sick patient wants to have a family member or friend pick up his prescription.

While written consent is necessary to release medical information, the entire process is too cumbersome and unnecessary, Thompson said.

Under the new rules, several guidelines help facilitate the care of patients. The guidelines include allowing doctors and hospitals to access information about the patient that they are treating so they can make the most informed decisions about the patient's care. This lets the doctor consult with other physicians or specialists regarding the care of the same patient.

The guidelines also simplify the health care process by loosening the strictness of consent forms. Under this principle, pharmacists will be able to fill prescriptions over the phone rather than waiting for a doctor to call them in or make a patient wait for an hour while the prescriptions are filled.

Whether patients would be allowed to call in the prescription themselves is unclear. Jeff Wright, pharmacist at McLanahan's, 116 W. College Ave., said if patients were to call the pharmacies themselves there would the potential for an enormous amount of fraud with people calling in fake prescriptions. He also said it would make for more confusion in the pharmacy.

"We ourselves have a hard time interpreting a doctor's handwriting," Wright said. "People would have a hard time reading prescriptions and understanding what the medical language (is that) doctor's use."

The new rule also allows parents to have access to their children's records, including information about mental health, substance abuse and abortion.

Elizabeth Verbos (junior-journalism) said she hopes the new guidelines are effective in easing the burden of paperwork and unnecessary steps people experience in hospitals and doctors' offices.

"The system as it is now just causes more problems for people looking to get better," Verbos said. "It places unwanted stress and time burdens with all of the paperwork and phone calls, and it just slows down the doctor whose already five hours behind schedule."

The decision to put the rule into effect follows two months of talks with lawmakers, interest groups and health care leaders and the review of over 20,000 written comments from concerned citizens on the issue.

HHS began implementing the new rule Saturday, but said it will consider any necessary modifications over time to make sure that the quality of health care doesn't suffer under the new rule. Health care facilities have two years to adhere to the rule. The Office for Civil Rights will be making sure the guidelines are enforced.