Hey Folks,
I just got off the phone with this very nice and informed women. Her name is Barrie Gewanter and she is the local director here at the local CNY Chapter of the ACLU. She is one of their two national experts on HIPAA and the Patriot Act. She and I had a great conversation and we discussed a number of health information privacy issues and where she personally as well as where the local and national organizations stand.
She wants me to help her facilitate a dialog between the healthcare community here in CNY and elsewhere, on the issues of medical privacy, the regisitries, CCHITT and other related subjects. We briefly touched on issues such as ASP model software vendors and other such forced control of access to our patients data as well. Her interest is certainly peaked and I think we have all found a new avenue for many of our concerns.
I am posting a link here for all to connect to the national website where there is a ton of interesting stuff about these matters that are a concern to us all. In the long run I still feel that the main way to defeat or at least control CCHITT like laws and standards is to fight them based on civil liberties, which is a great and wonderful thing to defend and uphold anyway. So at least we will be doing something truely meaningful and worthwhile for us, our children and our children's children.
I know that this organization has gain themselves a bum rap as of late, but most of what they do is really good and has consitutional protections of us all as the basic of how and why they proceed on any given matter. But heck even I don't agree with them on everything. Open boarders advocacy is one that comes to mind that I don't personally support or agree with.
But one has to remember certain cases like the right of the Nazi party to conduct and hold a ralley and march in a mainly Jewish community in Illonis. As many of you know I am Jewish myself, but I totally supported their legal defense of this case. No matter how offensive a person's speech may be, no matter how much it is distasteful and even "crazy" or worse, we need to protect the rights of all to free speech. And so thru grit teeth my family and I supported them in this matter back then. For sure it is tough sometimes, but this is what it truely means to live in a free country and a democracy.
So give these guys half a chance and check out the links here. I think we have found a new set of friends here. Let me know what you all think....
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/medical/35657lgl20080613.htmlhttp://www.cnyclu.org/aboutusmain.htmPaul
