Al and all,
Thanks for your insights.
It's time for me to perform my legislative duties for my medical society. I think physician/consumer protection legislation would be timely to present to the House of Delegates, this year.
Do you have any language or wording that I may want to use to protect users from unscrupulous vendors (AC excluded, I hope).
In our community, the majority of physicians have bought into an ASP system that they feel is not providing basic support. They supported their home grown ASP vendor enthusiastically and I doubt that these souls went through the permutations of possibilities and blindly agreed to their EULA. Now, they grumble and whine, but are afraid to terminate as they did not come up with an end plan when they bought the subscription agreement. I believe that their vendor can charge a hefty price to convert their data stored in super-secret locations (probably in the United States)to a usable format.
WHEREAS, commercial law has not been able to keep up with rapid advancement in technology,
WHEREAS, legal challenges on issues regarding rights of ownership of patient related data have yet to fully "rear its ugly head", and such legal challenges would be costly to all those involved, and may jeopardize medical practices,
WHEREAS, CCHIT is represented heavily by a consortium of EMR vendors with little or no input from end users, (exhibit A)
WHEREAS, EMR vendors have inserted language in EULA which is vague or in some cases implied rights to vendors not yet subjected to legal scrutiny, (Exhibit B, C, D, E, F, G, and H),
WHEREAS, individual end-users may have difficulty interpreting the ramification of EULAs written in legal language not readily comprehensible,
RESOLVED, that the AMA seek legislation establishing that EMR vendors are held legally responsible to keep patient data accessible to their end-user,
RESOLVED, that the AMA seek adoption of language to standardize EULA for EMR softwares and ASP agreements, and that this language be incorporated in any patient related software (either specifically in writing or implied),
RESOLVED, that legal reprentation be provided for members in cases where member(s) be subjected to loss of use of patient data, or the data access is withheld via software program, deactivation, or programming designed to cripple the function of the software.
