Editorial Comments j Physician PDA Use and the HIPAA Privacy Rule

Optimal health care delivery requires that providers have access to current clinical information.1 In the last 25 years, hospitals have dramatically improved diagnostic capabilities for both inpatients and outpatients, but providers often do not have access to the results.2 These disruptions in information availability lead to clinical errors and can cause patient injury or death. Many physicians use individual lists with names, hospital identifiers, room numbers, and perti-nent clinical information when a decision needs to be made and the patient’s record is not at hand. With the ready availability of personal digital assistants (PDAs), many cli-nicians now keep these patient lists in electronic format.3–6 Physicians can improve their access to information by downloading patient data into personal handheld computers that are available wherever decisions need to be made. Hospital administrators may be reluctant to allow such information transfers because of concerns about confidenti