Your Health Secrets Are Maybe-Already on the Internet
Now this is disturbing -- CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen was happily researching for a story on the above topic, and "stumbled upon" her own medical history online. Every un-fun detail from mammograms to removal of foot-splinters was chronicled on her insurance provider's Web site, and, in a similar fashion, the name of every prescription drug she's taken since 2003 was listed on her pharmaceutical plan's site. Awkward!
But Cohen's language is a little misleading because she didn't really stumble (as in -- she was happily Googling her name and suddenly details about her birth control preferences popped up). She actually called her insurance carrier and relayed personal info (date of birth, Social Security number, etc.) in order to access her online records on purpose.
The long and short of it is that many insurance companies do keep online records of clients' histories. This may not be a bad thing. An online archive could a great way to find all your health care information in one place. In fact, some people are into the idea and are paying between $15 and $150 to have their paper records scanned and put online through services like Google Health and Microsoft Healthvault. These records are kept in https secure sites, and are password protected. Though privacy concerns are inevitable, it's not like friends or family can just Google your name and find out about that time in college when you got ringworm from the shower curtain.
If you're worried about compromising details of your medical life being online, you can generally contact your insurance carrier and ask them to remove it, though Cohen suggests finding out what they have on you first. Check with your carrier to see what kind of info is actually online. Cohen's provider assured her that they keep the racier details (STDs, mental health issues, reproductive concerns) off the Internet. Interesting compromise?
As Harvardian surgery professor and medical informatics expert Dr. Steven Schwaitzberg says: "Welcome to the 21st century." [Source: CNN.com]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Benjamin Wright @ Jun 8th 2008 7:49PM
Christine: Maybe patients can bolster privacy by inserting legal terms of access (like an end-user license agreement) into the content of their electronic medical records. The terms could set binding rules for who may view data and when. The idea is not legal advice, just something to think about. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/02/contracts-for-patient-privacy.html