Rare opportunity for action on medical record privacy and data control (MN)

The MN Dept of Health wants your comments on patient consent before accessing private medical records, on having to inform patients about unauthorized access to medical records, and on whether patients should be able to see the electronic logs that show exactly who accessed their medical records, when, where, and why.

States have power to write real privacy laws. Help legislators take a strong stand for real consent, limited consent, and the right to stay off the National Health Information Network. The NHIN is being created by $27 billion from the Recovery Act (stimulus). It will share your data with 2.2 million entities as authorized under HIPAA and HITECH (an act within the stimulus bill). The federal HIPAA law allows state privacy laws to supercede HIPAA's no-privacy law.

SAMPLE COMMENT: (if use this, please revise at least one line and make at least one personal comment of your own to personalize it so it can't be dismissed as a "form letter")

Dear Commissioner Edward Ehrlinger,

Your department has asked for comments on three questions related to medical record access. I have a question. Why are there no questions about how the public feels about the very terms and assumptions behind the questions.

I have learned that "representation of consent" means everyone from hospitals to clinics to researchers to contractors and others can access to my records without having my actual consent in hand; without being positively sure I said yes. Also, why is the question not also about "unintentional unauthorized" and how is "authorized access" defined? Too often the forms I'm asked to signed at the doctor's office have only one signature line for all sorts of things above including consent for treatment. Are people sharing my information for non-treatment activities without my true consent?

My data is my data. No one should look at it or use it just because someone claims they have my consent. And as with anything else I own, I should be able to control who's using it and to know who's been looking at it and why. That's what legislators needs to know and should be told. Make sure that my concerns are in your report to the legislature.

Name City, MN

EMAIL COMMENTS TO: MN.eHealth@state.mn.us

OR MAIL TO: Minn. Dept of Health, 85 East Seventh Place, Ste 220, P.O. Box 64882, St. Paul, MN 55164-0882

DEADLINE: Next Thursday, December 20, 2012

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