Patient Privacy

OASIS - The Outcome and Assessment Information System

OASIS - the intrusive home health data collection system

Medicare's OASIS home health data collection system

There is no obligation on the part of private patients to contribute to the Medicare OASIS database. Yet, OASIS regulations seek to collect data on all patients in the home health system. There is no statutory basis for coercion of non-subsidized patients into the federal data collection process. In fact, the Fourth Amendment prohibits such collection without patient consent.

Medical Privacy Panel Discussion
National Press Club

Birth Defects Registries

Two Home Health Nurses Sound Alarm

Federal Privacy Act of 1974

Records maintained on individuals

Mandated School Billing for Special Education Health Services

The 1998 Minnesota K-12 Omnibus Education bill mandated that all schools bill third-party payers (HMOs, insurers, and Medicaid) for health care services given under Special Education. M.S. 125A now mandates that funds ($50,000) be provided for training school staff in coding and other necessary skills and information for submitting Medicaid and insurance claims.

Psychological Testing in Schools

Referring to a 1986 newspaper expose': "It took four years, an audit of Pennsylvania's federal funding links to the EQA [Educational Quality Assessment], and a series of threats and counterthreats between federal and Pennsylvania education officials over the particulars of the funding, before state testing authorities finally admitted to the public that the EQA was, in fact, a psychological testing instrument and that it violated several of the seven protected areas under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, passed in 1978, sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch." (page 11)

Health Care Policy Group Warns New Law May Allow Breach of Medical Confidentiality

Citizens for Choice in Health Care (CCHC), a Minnesota health care policy organization, has recently discovered that a portion of the K-12 Education bill, which violated federal law (42 U.S.C.Sec. 405) by requiring the collection of student social security numbers, was not completely dropped from the 1998 bill.