Telling that John Doe is your patient is still different from just asking "you know John Doe?". The latter only discloses the fact that you know the name, and the rest isn't a certainty.
For example, if a doctor searched for their patient's name once and haven't ever searched for any other patient, but have searched for, e.g., a family member or a friend - it probably doesn't disclose enough information to be a privacy violation. If doctor looks up every patient they have, it's obvious they're leaking that data and if the laws forbid this level of disclosure - they should be held accountable. The article suggests something in between - so I don't think it's obvious whenever it's legal or not. It's likely to be not (in a real-world scenario), but still...
(And if doctor generates ton of random but real names and mixes in some patient names indistinguishably - it's probably okay, haha. Of course, that's not what happens, either.)
Telling that John Doe is your patient is still different from just asking "you know John Doe?". The latter only discloses the fact that you know the name, and the rest isn't a certainty.
For example, if a doctor searched for their patient's name once and haven't ever searched for any other patient, but have searched for, e.g., a family member or a friend - it probably doesn't disclose enough information to be a privacy violation. If doctor looks up every patient they have, it's obvious they're leaking that data and if the laws forbid this level of disclosure - they should be held accountable. The article suggests something in between - so I don't think it's obvious whenever it's legal or not. It's likely to be not (in a real-world scenario), but still...
(And if doctor generates ton of random but real names and mixes in some patient names indistinguishably - it's probably okay, haha. Of course, that's not what happens, either.)