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Social Security Administration Launches E-Health Info Exchange
Lucas123 writes "In what could be the start of a national health information exchange system, the Social Security Administration became the first federal agency to go live with a public-private electronic health records information exchange that will cut wait time for 2.6 million Americans who apply for benefits each year by weeks or months. The electronic exchange runs on a database operated by a non-profit organization in Virginia and open-source software deployed at the Social Security Administration. 'The goal of the NHIN effort is to enable secure access to health care data and real-time information sharing among physicians, patients, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and federal agencies ... regardless of location or the applications that are being used.'"
I've said before I'm mixed on this one. I worry about abuse but I also wouldn't mind the hospital having my medical history/allergy information if I'm rushed in incapacitated. I also wouldn't mind having to not fill out the same form every time I visit any doctor.
When you file for long-term disability with Social Security, they need to grab all of the recent medical records from your primary physician and all the specialists you're seeing. This process takes a long time, generates a ton of redundant paperwork (many dupes of lab work and such that went to multiple places), and isn't very accurate. I went through this a few years ago with my mother. One of the physicians didn't respond in time to the request they sent for more information, stuff that was pretty critical. We believe that was one of the factors causing her initial claim and first appeal to be denied.
That was over four years ago; her case is just coming up for the final review now. That's how big the backlog is here, and medical records processing time is one of the big drivers to the process.
At the point where you're applying for Social Security disability, your medical records are no longer really private anyway. They're going to scour everything available to confirm that what's happened to you is both permanent and real.
A few comments on this:
1] Given the way records in private medical databases are protected (or rather, not protected), this system will at least have the sunshine of many eyes making sure its security, data loss prevention, and procedures to correct misinformation, is all up to date.
2] Invasion of medical privacy is only a major concern in the US because of the presently legal practice of insurance companies cherry-picking only the healthiest of people to insure. If the US had a national health care system like every other major first world nation, there would be little or no economic incentive to go sneaking peeks at people's medical records. So fix that instead.
3] This will both increase the quality and decrease the price of medical care. It is a step up.
4] Back to my point #2. This is one of the many kinds of efficiencies that are not dangerous only when you have a national medical plan. So long as we have economic incentives for doing bad things, those things will happen. Oh, but public-schools=socialism! libraries=socialism! public-health-care=socialism! It seems like the only thing that isn't socialism is covering the bad bets of right wing gamblers on Wall Street. All trillion dollars of it.
States would probably do a worse job of it, and we'd probably end up with 50 systems that don't talk to each other (well, actually, more likely 14 done, 5 that never finished implementation, 20 stalled in legislature, ...).
It's most useful if it's seamless across the nation so if for some reason I'm injured in another state my information will be available with no fuss.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
This accurately describes how states currently handle immunization registries. The CDC sets up federal reporting guidelines, but each state has its own registry implementation. This leads to all sorts of fun when trying to do stuff like transfer records when people relocate to another state, or tracking disease infection rates across state lines.
I'm not saying that having a national medical database is necessarily a good thing, but it's immeasurably better than having individual state repositories.
While I agree with your sentiment about doctors (after all, their expertise is medical (chemistry, bio), not technical). However, I am betting that your comment about hospital info security is borne from not having worked in such an environment.
Having run the IT side of a hospital's foundation, and having to interface with their network security, I can say that most definitely they are very competent with data security. Now mind you, this is in Canada -- but I doubt the competent sys admins are only born north of the border.
Hospitals (and the several sys admins I have known that run them) are very much on top of their game -- even the the point of being a pain in the ass to work with (which is both good and bad). Many doctors and nurses absolutely hated the arcane network security protocols in place, but they worked, and the hospital network maintained triple-9 uptime.
Take my anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt, but from my experience, hospital networks are QUITE secure.
But the US-like health system is widely available in most 3rd World countries, so there is no lack of alternatives.
Get a 1st World health care system. Those that don't like it can move to Sudan or Chad and be happy.
It can be argued that personal medical information is potentially more important than you life savings. Just a few weeks ago some company in the UK was selling confidential data on worker's to building firms that illegally vetted new hires.
There are probably many unscrupulous companies out there that would vet new hires based on health factors such as mental health history, insurance risks (for companies with private insurance), or simply the fact that the STD you have may indicate you are more likely to sexually harass coworkers.
Someone having your online banking account information can only steal the money you have at that time. Someone having your medial information can steal your ability to make money.
Baby boomers have got to be the biggest pack of whiny, self-indulgent motherfuckers that ever lived on this planet. Even though they are all getting old now, they still act like a bunch of goddamn teenagers. The sooner they die off, the better America will be.
A correction: "Social Security" is OASDI, a "trust fund" of government debt that will start to be drawn down in 2017 and exhausted by 2041, at least according to the last projections by the Social Security Trustees.
"Prescriptions for endless psychological disorders and sports injuries" are covered by Medicare: a separately funded program. It in even worse shape -- the "trust fund" is expected to be exhausted by 2017.
Some of us baby boomers have been pointing out the problems with both programs for the last 30 years, and have been effectively told by previous generations to STFU. But at this point, Social Security alone has collected about $500,000 from me (assuming a modest rate of return).
I didn't plan to depend on Social Security benefits. But, my expectation is that I will need them just to pay the increased income taxes that will be required to fund the current administration's spending spree. So, I will offer you the same advice given to me when I was in your position: STFU.