Post by John KoolPost by Cletus BakerPost by Rick (NO Spam) EthridgeIsn't this a violation of the Federal Records Privacy Act?
Yeah, the HIPPA regulations already lock down *attributable* data
tighter'n a drum. This article seems to be another "The Sky Is Falling"
warning about how the ubiquitous "They" want to use data about you for
any number of nefarious purposes ranging from fraudulent insurance
practices to eugenics. We need to have non-attributable statistics
available to NIH and other governmental agencies so that they can
formulate a big-picture idea about what's going on (or isn't going on)
in health care. And this information needs to be easy and inexpensive
to accumulate and port where it's needed. But there's always a fringe
"Big Brother's Getting Bigger" element who throw up knee-jerk resistance
to any process for collecting and maintaining such useful data. Sigh.
But, given the widespread attempts to steal identities and other
personal information, do you believe the ubiquitous "they" will be able
to protect the privacy of those records?
At least I got two people to post!
Sure has been quiet here.
Yeah, I thought I'd come outta hiding. ;-)
But yes, that's just it ... the information "they" will get isn't
personal (which is what I meant by "attributable" above), it's
aggregated data with no names or addresses attached. Of course, it's
not much use if there isn't some kind of geographic reference, but it
doesn't have to be as granular as a street address. And HIPPA has
already proven itself to be sufficiently terrifying that half the people
who really, really NEED the nuts and bolts of, say, my daughter's
condition can't get it without a ream of paperwork and a three-week
wait. So it's doing it's job in spades.
So, just like overreactions to weather situations, we see overreactions
to the notion that somebody, somewhere, is gonna have my statistics in a
database. Just imagine what it will be like when an emergency room
somewhere needs to get access to your medical records pronto and the med
records technician asks to have a notarized copy of the authorization in
triplicate before they can release that information.....