STD Testing and the new Healthcare Law: Should you be concerned?

With the passage of Healthcare reform,privacy advocacy groups are naturally concerned about what this means for patients confidential medical information.  One of the tenants of the new legislation is the sharing of valuable medical information through new technologies in order to create a comprehensive database of medical records.  The goals of such a system are honorable:  better care by hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and pharmacies by being able to have an instant picture of a person’s medical history.  No one can deny that such a system would be a caregiver’s utopia…if executed correctly and efficiently.

Unfortunately, very few large scale initiatives by our government have ever been implemented in that fashion, and the scale of this one is unlike anything we have ever seen before.  But even though many of the components of the new health care system are years from being implemented, people are already noticing and starting to be concerned about who can see their private medical information.

One industry that has already been offering confidential medical testing for the past twenty plus years is the online STD Testing industry.  Started during the rise of HIV and Aids awareness, these companies, staffed with fully trained counselors and medical personnel, began offering confidential and quick STD testing to the one hundred million sexually active adults in the United States.  Prior to this, the only option an individual had was to go see his or her doctor, or to travel to one of the crowded, understaffed free health clinics.  In each of those scenarios, a detailed record was kept of what activity caused your concern, what type of testing you had done, and what the results were of those tests.  As insurance providers started gathering more data on pre-existing conditions in order to rate potential customers, more and more people were concerned that these “black marks” on their health record would somehow cause their already sky rocketing insurance rates to go up even more, or possibly even exempt them for coverage due to what might be seen as”risky behavior”.

Now, individuals can instead contact one of the many private testing companies, schedule the test at their convenience, and get their results in as little as one day.  And all of this is done privately, without anything showing up on your permanent health record.  Many industry experts see this trend expanding as more parts of the health care law go into effect, and they are not only talking about STD testing.  General wellness testing and DNA testing are now being offered and can give valuable information regarding a person’s overall health and into any possible issues they might be prone to in their life.  And only you know the tests you chose to take, and the results of each.

Oakland, Calif., Conference Targets Black Women For HIV/AIDS Awareness, Prevention

The Oakland, Calif., chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women on Saturday held a daylong conference, “Sistahs Getting Real About HIV/AIDS,” that addressed HIV/AIDS among black women, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.