[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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