Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Is AC releasing practice info to vendors

How did these guys get my AC info?

Hi Dr. Nolte,

I?ll be brief. The Alaska eHealth Network?s Regional Extension Center has experienced tremendous growth in medical practice membership (evidenced within the attached newsletter, page 2). As a South Anchorage resident, I?m available to personally discuss membership benefits with you and/or your team at a time of your choice.

Succinctly, AeHN has a positive working relationship with AmazingCharts. Our records show that Hillside Family Medicine, LLC?s renewal date is 22 June 2012. Upon membership and payment of a nominal $100/year fee for each FTE provider, your practice can completely pay for the Guardian Angel support fee of $995 per provider with AeHN?s grant funding. This membership offer is time-sensitive, and unused grant funds will be deployed to the lower-48 states by 28 February 2012.

Again I would be pleased to be of service to your practice. I look forward to your response.

Best wishes, Jim




Jim Landon, MHA
Regional Extension Center Director
Alaska eHealth Network (AeHN)
(866) 966-9030 ext. 4 (OFFICE)
(907) 770-1413 (FAX)
jim@ak-ehealth.org



www.ak-ehealth.org

I don't know, but will find out and post a reply here when I do. We do not give out client information to vendors, although we will email our clients on behalf of a partner vendor IF we feel the offering would be of REAL value for our clients.

Jon

John,

The REC contacted us initially some time back, even before we got AC, to tell us about various funds available. They have been in contact several times since by phone and email. Alaska physicians are a small group and they contacted us all, I think. I suspect you or one of your staff mentioned AC during a contact when they were expressing eagerness to send us money for one phase or another; I know I did. They seem to be a persistent lot, kind of like the Greek grandmother who insists you take a third helping of baklava, and equally harmless.

Thanks for the insight. Yes, we do work with them and mostly hear good things about the Alaska REC (compared to many other RECs out there).

But the email they sent posted by SOCKEYE clearly shows they have information from us on our client renewal dates. They must have got that directly from us. I'm still working to figure out how this happened, exactly...

Jon

This is a slippery slope my friends. First they offer low initial costs, which rise in the out years. This is a "sharing information" service, soon it will encompass billing and regulatory "sharing". And then try to turn it off down the road, good luck.

I'm not accepting any "federal monies", once you do, the web starts to thicken. How dumb is it, to pay taxes, then do things you know are not in societies/patients best interest (putting personal health info) out on the www in order for government to give us a few of our own tax dollars back........

John,

Turns out...it was me who allowed this to happen! Here are the details:

1. Alaska REC offered to pay Amazing Charts on behalf of our clients in Alaska. This money is from the government HITECH act (aka our taxes), and RECs can do with it what they deem necessary to get practices to achieve the Meaningful Use. Thus far, only Alaska has approached us with such a good offer for our clients.

2. I decided that this offering to our Alaska clients was worth notifying them about it, and was not a sham or other marketing ploy.

3. I sent the following email in May to all our clients in Alaska (at that time we had about 40 unique practices in Alaska):


4. I received one or two requests not to release info, and removed those practices from the list we prepared and sent to the Alaska REC. That list included the practice and owner's name, email, address, phone, licensed users, specialty, and annual support renewal date.

5. What's wrong with this picture: having our clients actively opt-OUT is a bad approach. At the time I felt that the offer to pay on behalf of clients was worth it for clients. That was a mistake that we have not made since.

From a privacy standpoint, Amazing Charts now assumes that every practice does not want any of their info passed to any third-party unless they actively provide consent to do so. Having users contact me to opt-OUT (rather than contact me to OPT-IN) was a bad move and won't happen again.

Instead, we have/will forward emails from RECs to our clients, but not provide the RECs our actual list of clients.

I want to formally apologize for allowing this to occur. It is a slippery slope, and I totally agree that we must remain truly vigilant to avoid casually releasing information that could possibly be deemed private.

Jon

Well done.

Jon,

I really appreciate your time in writing me a personal response.

We're gone most of the summer and must have missed the email.

I think your conclusion is spot on.

Thanks!

John