[LINK] Electronic Medical Records

Jan Whitaker jwhit at melbpc.org.au
Mon Mar 2 08:05:45 AEDT 2009


At 03:46 AM 2/03/2009, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>How to Make Electronic Medical Records a Reality
>
>By STEVE LOHR mytimes.com Published: February 28, 2009


1. Cisco expert suggests it's not all rosey -- similar concerns as 
with the Australian efforts. The comments are worth reading, too.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/38616

from the article:
The first one is the <http://www.forhealthfreedom.org>Institute for 
Health Freedom (IHF) is warning the public that the economic stimulus 
bill mandates the federal government to plan for each American to use 
"an" electronic health record (EHR) by 2014 -- without opt-out or 
patient-consent provisions. This is a very serious breach of privacy 
and one I would hope will be overturned with time. Seems as though 
the government decided to not come up with a comprehensive plan but 
instead made sure that no matter what it is everyone will have to be 
a part of it. This would open up your complete medical records to 
over 600,000 healthcare providers, payment processors, and government 
health agencies without your consent. An no, HIPAA will not protect 
you from this. This kind of pervasive access to anyone's health 
records screams of privacy and security concerns.

2. From a legal firm that seems relatively positive, there is still 
an acknowledgement of barriers. Maybe Australia needs to take a page 
from the CMS to determine the level of privacy compliance of our OWN 
providers before giving them the keys to the kingdom. But since there 
are so few auditing processes from the few privacy commissioners we 
have, it's probably a pigs flying dream. [this is an interesting 
find: a website that pulls together lots of consultancy papers on a 
range of topics - worth looking around]
http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=73582

 From the article:
In addition, HIPAA implementation standards have likely been hampered 
by the unresolved debate over whether to use an individual's Social 
Security number, or some other number, as a global personal 
identifier. Also, general security practices remain an ongoing issue. 
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have recently 
commenced onsite reviews of hospitals' compliance with security rules 
mandated by HIPAA.

3. The records are already being stolen by criminals that consider 
health records the platinum standard of ID fraud entry. This is a 
very scary one as the crims are in Malaysia. I would imagine access 
to AUSTRALIAN data would be as attractive. Has it already happened? 
Does anyone even know?
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080516_2203.php

 From the article:
Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of Finjan Software Inc., 
said the company's Malicious Code Research Center discovered last 
month that a computer server in Malaysia nominally controlled by a 
Russian registrant contained 1.4 gigabytes of stolen computer files. 
These included medical files from a health care provider in the 
eastern United States and 40 major financial institutions around the world.

Dixon said 250,000 to a million people have their medical identities 
stolen every year in the United States. The increased use of 
electronic medical records and the fact that overseas criminals have 
started to steal medical identities will exacerbate the situation, she said.

Shortly after Finjan notified the FBI of the existence of the 
Malaysian server, Ben-Itzhak said the server went idle, a possible 
indication its operators became aware of FBI probes. Since then, 
Finjan has discovered three similar servers and is working to 
determine whether they contain purloined medical data.


4. an earlier NYT article that discusses the privacy fight - 17 January 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/us/politics/18health.html



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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