Health for sale, cost: your privacy

A recent article on Wired.com titled “Medical Records: Stored in the Cloud, Sold on the Open Market” (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/medicalrecords/) investigates the selling of patient medical records with the help of new electronic record keeping systems. While it is perfectly normal and legal for anyone involved in patient care to have access to patient health data, third parties who manage electronic medical records also have access and are actually in some cases selling the data. While these people claim that all identifying information on the records has been erased, the director of the Data Privacy Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (back in 1997) discovered that if you cross reference the medical records with a few key identifiers (birthdays, gender, and zip codes) found in other databases, in the vast majority of cases one could easily figure out who the patient was. This not only directly violates the HIPAA Act (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) but is also a violation of our Constitutional right to privacy.

Health related information is important for many reasons: for the bottom line for pharmaceutical companies developing drugs to market, or it could end up in a database for companies who are trying to target a sale to your needs. This information is also relevant to potential employers, litigation proceedings, the government (for social security and workers compensation purposes), and also private insurance companies. However, more so then being an annoying side effect of electronic health record keeping, this is an invasion of our privacy as human beings. Many people work very hard to not let their health challenges limit them in life, so why should others who have nothing to do with our health care have access to such important personal information that our family or friends might not even have access to?

No matter the simplicity electronic medical recordkeeping may bring to the healthcare system or the potentially important role it may play in facilitating treatment due to emergency medical responders having access to a database of electronic records in the aftermath of a disaster, our right to privacy is one of the most jealously guarded amendments to the Constitution and must remain protected even in light of new technologies which have other benefits to patient care. To protect this right, we need to call for more strict regulations regarding who has access to our health related information and also as to what third parties can do with that information.

For more information on the benefits and pitfalls of electronic medical record keeping and on ways to help protect your medical privacy in the age of advancing technologies please visit the website devoted to Privacy Rights at http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8-med.htm to find out more information.

-Written by Melissa Mongogna