Sunday, February 25, 2007

Writing Can Deceive You

You can be deceived by the use of punctuation and/or by the writer’s choice of a noun over a verb.

For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects you. Supposedly your clinic can’t tell your insurance company (or others) what your diagnosis is.

But look at how HIPAA is explained to you by a clinic:

“You have a right to inspect and copy your protected health information. Under federal law, however, you may not inspect or copy the following records, psychotherapy notes, information compiled in reasonable anticipation of, or use in, a civil, criminal, or administrative action or proceeding, and protected health information that is subject to law that prohibits access to protected health information.”

That last sentence hinders understanding. Look what happens when it gains a colon and a couple of semicolons:

“Under federal law, however, you may not inspect or copy the following records: psychotherapy notes; information compiled in reasonable anticipation of, or use in, a civil, criminal, or administrative action or proceeding; and protected health information that is subject to law that prohibits access to protected health information.”

Earlier, the same document also uses a noun-action “disclosure” instead of “we disclose X.” Look at how the noun-action shields the clinic:

“We may use or disclose your protected health information in the following situations without your authorization. These situations include … research … national security …. Under the law, we must make disclosures to you and when required by the Secretary of the Dept. of HHS to investigate or determine our compliance with the requirements of Section 164.500."

In the sentence above, “we must make disclosures to you” means what? “Disclosures” is a noun. It allows the writer to hide what the clinic must disclose to me. “Hello, we disclosed some information. Goodbye.”

If the clinic's policy statement had used verbs, the sentence could have read, “we must disclose to you that we told Agency X that …." Then English grammar would have implied that the clinic would disclose more information. “Hello, we told the National Security Administration that you ….”

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