Medical secrecy

2023: The court fined the midwife of a hospital in the Sverdlovsk region 40 thousand rubles for disclosing medical secrets

The Rezhevskaya City Court of the Sverdlovsk Region satisfied the requirements of the prosecutor's office of the city of Rezh to bring to administrative responsibility the medical worker of the Rezhevskaya Central District Hospital (CRH). The press service of the regional prosecutor's office announced this on February 21, 2023. Read more here.

2021: Passage of a bill allowing disclosure of medical secrecy to the family of a deceased patient

At the plenary session of the State Duma on June 16, 2021, in the third reading, a bill was adopted allowing the disclosure of medical secrets to the family of a deceased patient.

According to RIA Novosti with reference to this document, information constituting a medical secret, after the death of a citizen, in order to protect information about his private life, may be disclosed to persons indicated by him during his lifetime, including family members and close relatives, if the patient or his legal representative did not prohibit them from providing them with the specified information. It is envisaged that consent to the disclosure of information constituting a medical secret can also be expressed in informed voluntary consent to medical intervention.

In Russia, a bill was adopted allowing the disclosure of medical secrets to the family of a deceased patient

The innovation gives the patient's relatives access to information about his state of health, the right to get acquainted with medical documentation and receive extracts from medical documents, including in electronic form.

Before the second reading, the bill clarified that the patient can also give consent to access to medical secrets in informed voluntary consent to medical intervention. In addition to the patient himself, such consent will be able to give his legal representative.

Also, the Ministry of Health will be empowered to approve the procedure for giving the written consent of a citizen or his legal representative to disclose medical secrets.

The document was developed taking into account the decision of the Constitutional Court (CC), where the relatives of the deceased patients complained, indicating that they could not receive information about how their loved one was treated - they constitute a medical secret, and access to it can be obtained if the patient wrote written consent in advance. The COP stated the need to develop a document that would regulate access to such information.^[1]

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