On Tuesday, HHS Secretary nominee, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, confirmed her support for the use of electronic medical records as a way of data mining patient information.
During the Senate hearings on her confirmation, Gov. Sebelius said that electronic health records (EHR) data was crucial to conduct “comparative effectiveness research [CER] to provide information on the relative strengths and weaknesses of alternative medical interventions to health providers and consumers.”
The stimulus bill passed with $1.1 billion allocated for CER to compare the clnical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of medical services. During the hearing, Sen. Pat Roberts from Gov. Sebelius’s own state of Kansas, expressed his concern that CER would be used to justify rationing by comparing costs, rather than effectiveness.
But Gov. Sebelius’s pledge to “provide every American with a safe, secure electronic health record by 2014” came on the same day that another breach of electronic medical records was leaking out.
The Mercury News reported that laptops containing 1,000 patient files were recently stolen at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s office in Santa Cruz, CA. (Mercury News, 3/31/09)
Even though the records were stolen in February, patients weren’t told until March 23, when they received a letter from the Medical Foundation. The records included diagnoses, treatment plans, E results and patient medical record numbers.
The laptop was stolen during a break-in when the office was closed. It was attached to a piece of equipment.
The Medical Foundation promises to do better in the future, and the Senate Finance Committee is expected to confirm Gov. Sebelius on Thursday.
Additional Information:
- “Great medical records roundup: The beginning of in-depth surveillance horrors?”, by James Bovard, Washington Times, March 13, 2009
- “Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan” by Betsy McCaughey , Bloomberg.com, Feb. 9, 2009.
- “Speeding on the Information Superhighway Will Result in Medical Pile-Up,” AAPS Congressional testimony, July 2005.
- “Data mining,” AAPS News, August 2006.
