Until 2/6/2015 you can give your opinion, anonymously or by name, to the Federal Government on its new plan to share your Electronic Health Records with 35 agencies and departments of the Federal government by going to HealthIT.gov and Strategic Plan Public Comments.
For consumers the implementation of this plan could prove disastrous because the government justifies the intrusion into your privacy with the vague interest in “improving health care, individual and community health and research,” with a motto of “Collect, Share, Use,” and plans to implement this plan by sharing your Electronic Health Records with 35 agencies and departments of the government including NASA, The Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission to name just three.
Disastrous because the Federal government has not proven itself capable of providing essential protections to consumers in exchange for the sacrifice of their privacy through its own ability to enforce its standards and procedures within the government, to prevent hacking into government systems or to protect individuals from medical identity theft.
On 11/23/2014, THE WASHINGTON TIMES REPORTED, “Even though there have been at least two dozen mass breaches of government computer systems since 2013, many federal agencies continue to have a lax culture and poor security provisions,” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/23/cybersecurity-lapses-leave-us-government-agencies-/#ixzz3M4GLc2Kk.
This was reported again in, “Healthcare IT News,” this summer, “CDC on EHR Errors: Enough’s Enough,” by Evan Schuman on July 8, 2014. The article continues, “The problems, though, go way beyond outdated software. There are also issues involving staff time and expertise.”
And, Kaiser Health News reported that “…medical-related identity theft accounted for 43 percent of all identity thefts reported in the United States in 2013,” by Michael Olive, 2/7/2014, “The Rise of Medical Identity Theft in Healthcare.”
There is inadequate protection for individuals to support increasing the number of agencies and departments within the federal government that have access to our medical records.
Then there’s the scare tactic or persuasion tactic frequently used to sell the public on the idea of sacrificing privacy rights…With terrorism it was the concept of keeping us safe. With EHRs it’s the concept of being able to improve our health by making sure our medical information is available. There is a problem with that, however, it has not proven true.
As reported this summer, on July 8, 2014 in, “Healthcare IT News,” “CDC on EHR Errors: Enough’s Enough,” by Evan Schuman on July 8, 2014, “The problems, though, go way beyond outdated software. There are also issues involving staff time and expertise.”
And in discussing that medical mistakes hit record highs on July 18, 2014, Erin McCann reporting for “Healthcare IT News,” in, “Deaths by medical mistakes hit records,” quoted Peter Pronovost, MD, Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality and director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins saying, "Medicine today invests heavily in information technology, yet the promised improvement in patient safety and productivity frankly have not been realized.”
What we’ve got is less privacy and no evidence-based likelihood of improved medical treatment and avoidance of medical mistakes as the government authorizes itself to share our medical records with 35 agencies simply collect, share and use our information.
There are steps that could be taken to improve the protections for consumers and to narrow down the government’s ability to use the information any way it wants instead of making up a reason to deprive us of our medical privacy with an overly general idea of improving health care, individual and community health and research, but first we’ve got to let the government know that this “plan” is no good for consumers.
