Home Forums Discussions General Discussion CCHIT, Passports & Privacy

Folks (Especially Roy and Al),
I'm gonna throw this out here real quick and we can pick up on it after the weekend. It is my firm opinion that we who know that CCHIT, back-door portals into private practices' medical records systems, and the invasion of government and insurance carriers of patients' and provoders' privacy need to strike right now while the iron is hot and people will "get it".

With all this "passport-gate" going on right now, we need to loudly sound the public alarm about these less than benevolent forces intent to hijack everybody's medical information for their own good. It is clear that once everyone's PHI is on centralized servers, nobody is safe. Next time we will be talking about the breach of security that killed a front-runners candidacy because he or she had some mental health Dx in his distant past as a teen or something.

This is another one of mine and Vinny's (where the heck are you anyway, are you alright???) it is not a matter of left or right, it is a matter of right or wrong. Anyone should be able to see the importance and the frightening possiblities of such a thing. I'm about 46 years old and I can remember Sargent Shriver's mental health history being compromised as it killed what little hope he and McGovern had back in '72 (the year my Dodge Dart was born). Even employers have access to people's credit history these days and are allowed to use such stuff as criteria to choose who to hire. Will PHI make the list someday???

Al,
You need to help us get in front of the right people down there and help them make the connection between centralized databases of PHI and what is happening right now. This should hopefully put an end to our problems and concerns for quite some time I would hope....

Good Night and Good Luck (and happy holiday for the NJB),
Paul

I'm working on this issue through our state medical society as well as through our state chapter of the AAFP. This issue will be debated in the House of Delegates. I will be asking that an investigation be conducted on how the AAFP allowed itself to be a conduit for advertisement via Surescript and EMR vendors. What has gone wrong with the AAFP? They happen to be one of the strongest supporter of CCHIT and other non-physician consortium to make the practice of medicine more difficult than it is already.

By the way, for those of you that think I'm a bit paranoid, here's an interesting article on being locked out of your own medical records:

http://www.modernmedicine.com/modernmedicine/Health+Information+Technology%3A+Electronic+Health+Records+%28EHRs%29+%2F+Electronic+Medical+Records+%28EMRs%29/If-your-EHR-web-host-locks-you-out/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/501559?contextCategoryId=44687&searchString=EMR

The thing to do now is to chip away at the fundamental statement from the CCHIT bosses, that somehow CCHIT offers "assurance" when one purchases an expensive EHR and places money at risk. One particular statement that I'll never let go of is the 2006 fighting words from Mark Leavitt MD, the Chairman of CCHIT who stated that concerning certification: "If you don't see an acceleration in the [EHR] market, then we have failed!"

One particular fight right now is with the chief editor of Medical Economics, who included in a recent set of articles one titled "EHR companies: How financially stable is your vendor?". In that article he listed all of these CCHIT-certified EHRs and boasted how they are all doing so well financially. I reminded him of Bear Stearns and sent him 6 stock charts of his so-called "stable" EHRs. He was so off the mark that just in the past week I've had to update my "What is Wrong With the HIT in the USA" slideshow with 3 companies that have had to join forces, be repurchased, or reorganize. I've written 2 letters to the editor, and neither have been posted (to be fair, one is only 24 hours old). The emrupdate thread has been viewed by a record 660 times in just 8 days! (URL: http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/t/13444.aspx )

The fight continues; we have to choose our battles. It looks like we're winning, as can be read here: http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/t/13488.aspx which confirmed what my lawyer-patient (who used to work on one of the Congressional oversight committees) told me a month ago- that their will is beginning to crumble. Fortunately, she is tied to my office by her monthly PT check (she's on warfarin). The atmosphere of the current recession has also dampened things on the push to forcing docs into purchasing expensive CCHIT certified EHRs.

We, the owners of the very EMRs that they wanted to make disappear, will rule the day at the end of all of this...

Cheers,
Al

Guys,
As much as I agree with many of the things you are both saying, I feel we have a once in a life time opportunity here to tie this very understandable, clearly defined incident to our larger issue at hand here.

Yes, I too hate CCHIT for it's expense, bloat, corporate greed, coruption, insider deals, unfunded mandate, and corporate welfare; BUT, my biggest reason for fighting this good fight is it's invasion of the doctor patient relationship that will errode and destroy trust between these two most important parties; as well as the ease of access to every citizen's health records by the government, the courts and all the carriers. I see this as a constitutional violating all of us. Nancy and I as civil libertarians see this as the most important, trumps all others issue here.

This is one of those "Strike Now" kind of moments in time that only come around every so often. We really should take this opportunity to get this issue out of the cover of only discussing it among industry insiders, and get it before the general public so as to send these SOB's crawling back under the rock from which they came. The time is now and we will regret not taking advantage of it some time in the future if we don't. Please folks let's all strike now while the iron is hot. Each and everyone of us needs to try and talk to our local papers and stations and get rid of this monster by helping them all see the obvious connection. We include vaccine registries in this greater issue too. They are the start of a bad slippery slope that con law folks watch out for.

Either stand and be counted or be known for quietly collaborating by doing nothing. There are times in history when such things occur that even just sitting idle is in itself complicite behavior. FISA and warrentless searches, this is really no different. What is in our medical histories in only the business of the patient and the treating doc and nobody else. History will remember who did or did not do what....

Good Night and Good Luck,
Paul