VA official says patient-controlled health records guard privacy better

Widespread use of personal health records, which individuals control, could help ensure privacy and confidentiality of medical data, a top official at the Veterans Affairs Department said on Wednesday.

Paul Tibbits, VA's deputy chief information officer for strategy, architecture and design, said health care providers should consider personal health records, which patients have access to and control, as the cornerstone of a national medical record system, as opposed to electronic health records, which clinicians manage.

By focusing on patient health records, individuals access and review their medical information, giving them the ability to oversee the privacy of their data, he argued. Tibbits was part of a panel speaking at the Washington chapter of the Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association.

Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based civil liberties group, disagreed. She said using personal health records isn't feasible now because the public has not embraced the technology. About 7 percent of Americans use personal health records, according to a survey the Californian Health Foundation released earlier this month.

VA and the Defense Department have started to exchange medical information with health care providers outside government such as Kaiser Permanente. The data is shared using the National Health Information Network, the backbone of the fledging U.S. medical records system that the Health and Human Services Department backs.

The NHIN raises security concerns, however, according to Army Col. Claude Hines Jr., deputy program executive officer for innovation and delivery at Defense's Military Health System.

Defense's AHLTA electronic health record system runs on networks that combatant commander's use and its security cannot be compromised, he said.

While the security of networks Defense uses to exchange information with VA is important, Hines said he is more concerned about the NHIN and networks operated by private health care providers to share data. "Who is going to protect the civilian networks?" said he asked.