From my podcast with Twila Brase, RN, PHN – https://www.americaoutloud.com/the-myth-of-medical-privacy-with-twila-brase-rn/
Back in 2018, Amazon made a software application that can mine a patient’s medical data and convert it to a searchable database. Amazon could customize the database for pharmaceutical companies, insurers, hospitals, researchers, and clinicians. Amazon claims the application would comply with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. By the way, isn’t it interesting that the word “privacy” is not in the title of the law that everybody thinks is a law that protects privacy?
Worse, some electronic health records had an embedded app (developed by Xealth, Inc.) that prompted doctors to recommend health products to their patients that—surprise!—were sold on Amazon.
Amazon is being hailed as a “disruptor” in medical care with its online clinics. For a flat fee, you can get in touch with a clinician of some sort and describe your symptoms or needs. As one customer testimonial reads, “Amazon Clinic was incredibly easy and convenient to get my thyroid medical refilled. No hidden fees, no in person visit. Also for someone without health insurance the cost was the absolute best part.” But there is a giant “but.” Amazon’s health clinic requires patients to give Amazon the authority to redisclose their health information in the future.
Cost effective, yes; but Amazon clinic’s terms of use raise the question: How much is your medical privacy worth? I remember the attempt to discredit Daniel-Ellsberg who exposed damaging information regarding the Viet Nam War with the release of the “Pentagon Papers”. Operatives dispatched by the President broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office looking for juicy tidbits. Imagine how easy that would be now. Hacking into electronic databases has become child’s play.
We’ll talk about this and so much more with my guest, a nationally recognized expert in the field of medical privacy.
Twila Brase, RN, PHN is President and Co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF), a national patient-centered, privacy-focused, free-market policy organization established 25 years ago in Minnesota to support health care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy. Her efforts led to a national law requiring parental consent for research using newborn DNA. Ms. Brase is author of the eight-time award-winning book Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records.
Ms. Brase’s “Health Freedom Minute” is heard weekdays by more than 5 million listeners across the United States. She provides testimony at state legislatures, meets with members of Congress and health care policymakers, and has been featured in major news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
