Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Work All Day

Here is a great story from UPI about the efforts of some folks in California to provide healthcare to migrant farm workers. Because many of them have poor english skills and because, legally here or not, they still fear INS trouble, many are unable or unwilling to seek medical help.
One of the unintended side-effects of HIPAA is that the workers do not need to fear the INS when they seek medical attention. And the required technology has made it easy for the folks running the program to connect to the hospital remotely via wireless VPN.
So the workers get healthcare, which goes a ways toward solving the public health issues of having a migrant population, and they can get it with a reasonable expectation of privacy.

No comments: