E-Health and Privacy
With the push for e-health records, "not everyone is taking the proper steps to de-personalize the data and protect patients."
Reading this from Texas? Well, according to Fortune, your medical records are definitely up for sale by the state. And with the push toward electronic health records, it may be easier to identify you.
The magazine reports that if you live anywhere else in the United States, they are probably up for sale as well as medical health records provide key information to researchers, who lobbied hard to keep them accessible. But with the push for e-health records, "not everyone is taking the proper steps to de-personalize the data and protect patients," Pam Dixon, director of the World Privacy Forum, a non-profit, told Fortune.
The business magazine says in Texas, the department of health services has been selling de-identified patient data to groups that would use it for research and some of the buyers include Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. It can fetch a pretty penny for the state, with access for data after 2007 costs between $2,100 and $5,600 per year.
But the de-identifcation process is not fullproof, Fortune reports and with e-health records, it's now easier than ever to cross-identify information and figure out who the patient is. Past breaches in electronic health records, Fortune says "have also resulted in identify theft, false Medicare and Medicaid claims, and credit card scams."