Posted on 06/26/2014 2:39:00 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Information compiled by data brokers from public records and credit card transactions can reveal where a person shops, the food they buy, and whether they smoke. The largest hospital chain in the Carolinas is plugging data for 2 million people into algorithms designed to identify high-risk patients, while Pennsylvania's biggest system uses household and demographic data. Patients and their advocates, meanwhile, say they're concerned that big data's expansion into medical care will hurt the doctor-patient relationship and threaten privacy.
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Much of the information on consumer spending may seem irrelevant for a hospital or doctor, but it can provide a bigger picture beyond the brief glimpse that doctors get during an office visit or through lab results, said Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes at Carolinas HealthCare System.
Carolinas HealthCare System operates the largest group of medical centers in North Carolina and South Carolina, with more than 900 care centers, including hospitals, nursing homes, doctors' offices and surgical centers. The health system is placing its data, which include purchases a patient has made using a credit card or store loyalty card, into predictive models that give a risk score to patients.
Within the next two years, Dulin plans for that score to be regularly passed to doctors and nurses who can reach out to high-risk patients to suggest interventions before patients fall ill.
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If the early steps are successful, though, Dulin said he would like to renegotiate to get the data provider to share more specific details on patient spending with doctors.
"The data is already used to market to people to get them to do things that might not always be in the best interest of the consumer, we are looking to apply this for something good," Dulin said.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Oops! They found out I ate a white potato yesterday and made a Grasshopper Pie for our friends this weekend!!
Cash will once again be King....until the government makes it illegal to buy food with cash.
Eat a candy bar your O’Care premiums go up everytime.
Obviously the number of the beast is 0b1010011010 and the beast is a computer
And the computer will enslave Man at the hand of the AntiChrist
I have already stopped the use of store loyalty cards.
I don’t use them, nor do I use credit/debit for everyday purchases. Crazy to use them.
“to suggest interventions before patients fall ill.”
What the devil is that supposed to mean???
This is ridiculous.
It's funny to watch the cashier get offended when you call their "loyalty" program a "spy on what you buy" card. If the store was loyal to me it wouldn't shout my buying habits to every marketer around, so it must be there to keep me loyal to the store without any reciprocal loyalty.
I know! Shall we start data collection with the EBT cards?
It is so odd to see the government scrutinizing the lives of “normal” people while the illegal population here in NJ grows; these people work for and spend CASH (including their rents on their undeclared apartments). Two parallel realities, with the “normal” people paying for the illegals as their government increasingly boxes them in.
Thanks for making me spit my vodka all over the screen!
It’s like the 5th Amendment - whatever is attributed to you can and will be used against you.
I love Grasshopper Pie!
Actually, the “loyalty” card thing is on the decline. Your purchasing habits can be traced through tracking of debit and credit card numbers.
“Cash will once again be King....until the government makes it illegal to buy food with cash.”
Actually, it would be great to barter medical advice for things like house painting, plumbing, landscaping etc. Physicians during the Great Depression took all kinds of ‘alternative payment’. I’m sure, however, barter is somehow illegal, since the IRS wouldn’t know how to deal with it. Also, the insurance companies would find a way to not cover you for malpractice if you were working in this manner.
I either don’t register my loyalty cards or give them bogus info.
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