Mari Frank Interviews Dr. Deborah Peel, Medical Privacy Expert

Deborah C. Peel, M.D. is Chair and Founder of Patient Privacy Rights, a national consumer medical privacy watchdog organization. Peel is a nationally recognized expert on medical privacy. She has been a proponent of retaining the Hippocratic Oath and medical ethics as the foundation for a patient-centered healthcare system for over a decade. She has testified before Congress and NCVHS on medical privacy, genetic privacy, and pharmacy benefits managers. Peel has practiced Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis for 29 years. For eleven years, she was Chief of Psychiatry at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, TX, where she ran the section of 100+ psychiatrists. She is a past President of the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians and a past President of the National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers. Her experiences as a practicing physician, watching the elimination of medical privacy and the resulting harm to patients convinced her of the need for a strong national consumer advocacy organization dedicated to saving medical privacy rights. As a mother and consumer she could not in good conscience leave the design and control of our national healthcare system and protection of patient privacy to industry. http://www.patientprivacyrights.org