Electronic Medical Records Compromise Patient Safety and Privacy

***NEWS RELEASE***

For Immediate Release
April 23, 2013

CONTACT:

Michael Hamilton, Hamilton Strategies: 215.815.7716 / 610.584.1096 or DHamilton@Hamiltonstrategies.com

CCHF Says: Electronic Medical Records Compromise Patient Safety and Privacy

Provides a List of the 10 Things to Know about Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

Key points:

* Computerizing medical records compromise patient safety and give government health officials and other outsiders easy access to private details of the confidential patient-doctor relationship.

* Electronic health records (EHRs) will allow medical data to be easily linked with other data including personal financial data, employment records, finances, demographic information, in the new federal system of records for the creation of a national system of health insurance exchanges.

* To begin the necessary public conversation, CCHF has released a one-page list of the 10 Things to Know about electronic health records:

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org) is drawing attention to the significant safety and privacy concerns of the mandate within Obamacare that requires doctors and hospitals to have federally-certified electronic health records or face financial penalties in 2015. 

Advocates claim federally certified Electronic health records (EHRs) will transform health information delivery in America.  They are right in saying this, but what more citizens need to be asking is:  is this the kind of transformation that is going to be good for medical care and what will be the cost to Americans if patient safety is compromised and privacy rights are lost? 

According to CCHF’s new ‘10 Things to Know’ point list EHRs have already been called “clunky, frustrating, user-unfriendly and inefficient. They have proven to result in reduced productivity, alterations in medical decision-making, at least six deaths, 22 new medical errors, misdiagnoses, and doubled pediatric fatality rates.  Doctors are reduced to data clerks that engage less with patients.”  Yet, doctors who fail to comply may face financial penalties and prosecutions.

In addition, certain medical information is required to apply to the health insurance exchange, where the “information provided … will be matched and verified against data provided by the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), Social Security Administration (SSA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Defense (DoD), Peace Corps, and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that is maintained by the Federally-facilitated Exchange….”

Twila Brase, president of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom cautions, “Much of the public has an unwarranted  and unhealthy confidence in computerized medical records. Even the FDA admits they have been the cause of patient deaths and injury. The public also has a false understanding of the so-called HIPAA privacy rule, which actually eliminated privacy. Furthermore, little media attention has been given to the safety concerns of EHRs and the use of EHRs by outsiders to control medical decision-making in the exam room. Our ‘10 Things to Know’  list is an attempt to begin a public conversation about the impact of EHRs on safety and privacy.

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