Do Not Pass Go Without Consent
<em>This post was written by Aliya Sternstein.</em> An advisory board to the California Health and Human Services Agency is out with a paper that suggests the electronic exchange of patient records should not proceed unless a patient opts into the network.
This post was written by Aliya Sternstein.
An advisory board to the California Health and Human Services Agency is out with a paper that suggests the electronic exchange of patient records should not proceed unless a patient opts into the network.
The state of California has been grappling with the question of whether access controls are strong enough to overcome the problem of loose policies surrounding the use and reuse of patient data. So, the California Privacy and Security Advisory Board has been brought in to study the pros and cons of an "opt-in" approach to health information exchanges.
Gaps in current privacy laws allow vendors to inappropriately use electronic prescription data in ways that could invade patient privacy, many civil liberties experts maintain. The loopholes include lax rules for providers on removing personal information from aggregated data. When certain data elements aren't stripped out, data mining companies can combine the elements with other data sources to uncover the identities of patients, the California paper explains.
"Technological solutions for more granular access controls are in development and a core requirement in the [federal] access consent policies specification is for consumers to be able to limit the type of data that may be available to any or a selected group of providers," states the board's paper, which was released on Friday.
The paper concludes: "Consent may be essential during this developmental time period."
And the title of the paper reiterates that finding: "HIE Implementation: Several Roadblocks Exist and Consent May be Integral in Moving Forward."
Given that the administration is paying doctors and hospitals tens of billions of dollars to electronically share health records, one might expect to see medical providers scrambling to convince patients to sign up.
Then again, the Veterans Affairs Department was able to round up more than 400 former service members who are simultaneously under the care of the VA medical system and Kaiser Permanente to participate in a San Diego, Calif. HIE pilot.