EEOC Warns Employers About Combining Health Records.

The EEOC recently issued an opinion letter warning employers that retaining personal and occupational health information in a single electronic record runs the risk of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the relatively new Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). Although employers have a right to obtain an employee’s health information under certain circumstances, those laws strictly limit the access to that information and the employer’s right to disseminate the information. For example, medical information that an employer might gather in connection with an employee’s FMLA leave request should not be made available to a workers’ compensation insurance carrier if the comp claim is unrelated to the medical condition underlying the FMLA leave request. Employers must be careful to segregate health information in separate files (paper or electronic) to avoid improper dissemination of the information.