Health Privacy by the Numbers

I'm married with children, so the concept of personal privacy is one that I abandoned years go.

Even so, I was somewhat surprised to learn that I am at "high risk" for having my private health information breached. On a scale of zero to 60, with 25 being the threshold for high risk, I scored a fig-leaf-curling 40 on a new test intended to gauge my vulnerability to health-data thieves. The color-coded equivalent of a "40" is a retina-searing red, which seems to indicate that nefarious entities are making off with my blood-pressure readings as I type this sentence.

The epiphany of unsecured data arrives courtesy of Patient Privacy Rights, which on Wednesday released its new Health Privacy Risk Calculator. The quiz calculates risk according to users' answers to six questions. Unless you pay cash for everything, take no medications and forgo the customs of contemporary living, you too are at risk, according to PPR, which calls itself "the nation's leading health privacy watchdog."

The point of the exercise, of course, is to educate consumers about ways in which their private health data can be compromised. The Risk Calculator's site contains links to information about the sieve-like system for handling health-care data and suggestions for making that information less vulnerable.

The goal is "to educate the public about the many ways their personal health information is used and sold without with permission," says Dr. Deborah C. Peel, founder of PPR. "Patients need to demand their privacy."