Confidentiality: the confusion continues

The author, a regional health authority administrator, argues that `ownership' is a side issue in legal and moral arguments over confidentiality of medical records. Nor is it practicable, he argues, for doctors alone to control all access to the medical records. He proposes the principle of `custodianship' of confidential information, to be accepted by an institution as a whole, as a possible way of resolving the problem. In commentaries on this and the following article an academic lawyer and a practising physician respond.