Category: Health Data

Yesterday’s Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report reported: Lawmakers, patient-privacy and health care advocates, and information technology experts on Tuesday “debated … how Congress can strike a balance between accelerating the adoption of a nationwide system of electronic medical records while protecting patient privacy,” CongressDaily reports (Noyes, CongressDaily, 6/4). The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on…

The California Senate passed a bill that would allow pharmacies to sell patient information to third-party marketers, including drug companies. It was sent to the California Assembly for consideration. The bill would allow a pharmacy to send mail to a patient without the patient’s authorization on condition that the letter pertain only to the prescribed…

Elizabeth Cohen writes for CNN: Imagine my surprise when, in the course of doing research for this story, I stumbled upon my own personal health information online. art.online.medrecords.cnn.jpg There it was in black, white, and hypertext blue. My annual mammograms; the visits to the podiatrist for the splinter in my foot; the kind of birth…

Nancy Ferris of Government Health IT reports: The American Health Information Community is recommending that the federal government prepare for the day when people will choose to electronically store their genetic makeup so that doctors can match medical treatments to their genes. Scientists are beginning to make connections between patients’ genetic characteristics and responses to…

Health & Human Services  Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released its report to speed up the adoption of Health IT while addressing privacy and other concerns: Full Report (PDF) (679KB) Synopsis (PDF) (501KB)

The American Civil Liberties Union urges the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health at today’s hearing to develop privacy and security standards at the same time the health care industry converts from paper to electronic patient records. The ACLU warns that without real patient controls and compensation for misused data, American medical records are…