“Governator” to the EMR Privacy Rescue? Who Protects Patient Privacy in Electronic Medical Records
Wow! Two years have nearly flew by when I first posted this in Summer 2006; and 16 years since an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) was mandated by the Feds. Issues of access, adoption, adaption (A3) continues as well as with the V.I.P.’s privacy making headlines with Gov. Schwarzenegger’s medical records being breached. http://topics.latimes.com/politics/people/arnold-schwarzenegger
According the the LA Times, “I have been a victim of this in my own hospital visits,” Schwarzenegger said at a news conference, “if it was for heart surgery or hip surgery, shoulder surgery, all of those things.”
Every time he has left an operating room, the governor said, he has been told there were “people going through your file that had white coats on. Obviously, they snuck into the hospital. They had nothing to do with the hospital staff at all. So those things happen.”
Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times
Electronic Medical Record, Personal Health Record and your medical information and patient privacy
I had lunch this week with a friend of mine here in Silicon Valley who recently sold his technology company, a person health record (PHR) system to a major health insurer. The PHR system provided individuals with an online and portable health and medical record with the focus on the consumer managed versus a specific health plan, employer or medical facility. It will be interesting to observe how the technology is adopted/adapted by the new owner in servings its membership.
This past year there has been a dramatic increase activity and push by the Feds to breath new life in this medical information, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and PHR area. As I have stated on numerous occasions, way back in 1992 when I was serving as a hospital CEO, Congress “mandated” a EMR for all hospitals and health facilities by 1997. This never happen. Why? Perhaps it was the lack of enforcement to backup the federal requirement, the lack of internal/external funding sources to pay for such change or the industry trying to develop and accept one system that could interface with all those “legacy systems” within the walls of the hospitals such as radiology, lab, surgery, pharmacy, etc. It isn’t a matter of “hardware” but “software” meaning getting humans to adapt, accept and adopt (A3) change.
There is no doubt the advances in software and hardware applications has improved over the last 12 years and it is now technically possible, but there continues to be a search for this “Holy Grail” solution that enables providers to implement a robust EMR. In the mean time, hundreds of EMR and PHR vendors are chasing after this market which is very cluttered and confusing. Equally important is just who “owns” your health and medical information? Who makes sure it is “secure” and protects your privacy? Recent news report about millions of medical recordsand health data being stolen out of cars, vans and homes of government and hospital employees give little comfort to all of us who should have concern over privacy and patient confidentiality issues.
Do you know where your medical information is?
“I’ll Be Back”,
Michael
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Hi Mike, interest set of questions you’ve raised. I’ve spoken to a Canadian in the health information area about EHRs. His contention is that there has been far more government support for EHRs in Canada for a decade. Additionally, they have a nationalized healthcare system that is far less fragmented than it is in the States. Yet despite this governmental backing, coupled with having a health system that is inherently more compatible to standardization, the empirical evidence up north is that EHRs have failed to reach adoption rates (indeed, the triumvirate of A3) to any meaningful degree. If that is the case, and I haven’t done any verification of these claims but this person is very knowledgeable of the Canadian health system, then it is a relevant case study to expectations of EHRs in America. The implications are that the road will be long, winding and filled with bumps and potholes. We all agree that the paper-based system is archaic. But there’s a cautionary tale in Canada about over-estimating the pace of technological change.