Consumer Watchdog Calls on Google to Cease Lobbying Effort to Allow Sale of Patient Medical Records; Urges Congress to Adopt Privacy Protections in Economic Sti...(Our Records. Under the current version o...),Health

Date:1/27/2009

Our Records. Under the current version of the bill, a patient is not able to track which medical personnel access their medical records or how that information is used. The measure must be amended to allow patients to request an "audit trail" detailing when their medical record was accessed, by whom, and for what purpose.

3. Make Database Holders Accountable for Keeping Our Medical Records Private. Companies developing electronic medical record technology must be fully accountable for the safe keeping of our information. "Safe harbor" provisions in the current legislation that would insulate these interests from accountability must be removed. For example, the current version of the bill shields database holders from telling patients when possible identity thieves access their private information as long as the data disclosure was "unintentional" and the company acted in "good faith."

4. Allow States To Adopt More Protective Standards. Currently the bill allows states to establish additional privacy regulation and enforce existing requirements. These provisions must remain part of the final proposal. Other federal health care laws, like HIPPA, Medicaid, and COBRA, provide a model for a federal-state partnership rather than federal pre-emption of more protective state standards. States have traditionally been the laboratories of innovation in patient privacy. In fact, the gold standard for medical privacy is the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, which bars the sharing, selling, or using for marketing or otherwise, any private medical information.

5. Retain House Amendments Protecting Private Information. Last week, Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) added amendments to the House bill requiring the holders of health information databases to make protected health information "unusable, unreadable, or indecipherable" to unauthorized individual
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SOURCE Consumer Watchdog Copyright©2009 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

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