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Hospitals Begin Data-Mining Patients
schwit1 (797399) sends word of a new and exciting use for all of the data various entities are collecting about you. From the article: You may soon get a call from your doctor if you've let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of ordering out for pizza or begin shopping at plus-sized stores. That's because some hospitals are starting to use detailed consumer data to create profiles on current and potential patients to identify those most likely to get sick, so the hospitals can intervene before they do. Acxiom Corp. (ACXM) and LexisNexis are two of the largest data brokers who collect such information on individuals. They say their data are supposed to be used only for marketing, not for medical purposes or to be included in medical records. While both sell to health insurers, they said it's to help those companies offer better services to members.
I'm alright with my doctor having this information, in theory, but I really don't trust the insurance companies with this. "So, I see that you like taco bell. We're raising your rates."
If we criminalized collection of data without specific field level consent, we could end this invasion of privacy.
Thanks a lot autocorrect. Now my insurance premiums are going up.
...and so I can tell that by "better services", they mean "withdraw coverage or raise the insurance premium the millisecond your risk increases".
How is not a HIPAA violation to share my health data (which is necessary for the marketing to be profitable) with advertisers? Under most circumstances, just identifying people as patients is not allowed, let alone saying that John Doe, who has hypertension, has been ordering pizza.
that corporations and governments are watching your every move, putting it into databases to penalize you over it's content later. As to if it's accurate, well forget that! You are always guilty before the corporate overlords.
think of it as a new 'convenience charge'.
You may soon get a call from your doctor if you've let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of ordering out for pizza or begin shopping at plus-sized stores.
When was the last time any doctor anywhere made an outgoing call to a patient? I get better customer service from my dog's veterinarian.
Since they will check the NSA 'passive kill' list anyway, they might as well do the rest, in case you are not the standard auto-die list .. the single man. Even then, they might want to torture you first at NSA so perhaps you'll get health care anyway. Or saved to fill a private jail cell, perhaps.
Law firms recently received instructions regarding "secondary" violations of HIPAA. For instance, a firm might store X-ray images and depositions, expert affidavits, diagnoses, etc. that are strictly controlled at the source, but not necessarily at law firms, be the form of retention paper or digital. It would seem logical that all parties who have access to, or store, HIPAA-covered information should be regulated the same.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Is data mining patients done under local or general anesthetic?
While both sell to health insurers, they said it's to help those companies offer better services to members.
Oh, Plah-ease!
What a load of bullshit!
Do people really believe this shit?
"For your convenience." ....
It's like when I had to create a Roku account and the webpage said payment information was required for my "convenience". Bullshit. They want your payment information in the hopes that you'll make impulse buys (with a 30% commission going to Roku). After bitching to customer service and having them give me the horseshit about it being for my convenience, they waved the requirement for payment information. If they didn't, I would have returned the unit as defective and let Roku eat the fucking cost.
I really hate it when companies bullshit like that. It's insulting.
And what's the deal with Apple? Getting an Apple ID online gives you an option to skip the payment information, but when signing up with an iOS device, there is no such option. WTF?!
Whatever. Apple has about a dozen bogus accounts from me because it took a while for me to figure it out.
Make stupid policies and stupid things happen.
This youtube video attributed to ACLU has been around at least 8 years, and explains it all. "Ordering Pizza in the Future" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
More like a computer- generated robocall.
Besides, your doctor or hospital would probably prefer that you acquire an expensive long-term health condition that requires a lot of billable and reimbursable outpatient labor. They just don't want to see you walk in the door without private health insurance.
Bought size 36 pants instead of the usual 34's began to get offers from both Ben&Jerry's and NutriSystem.
Isn't this from a Dick story?
It wouldn't cost much to implement, and would be a trove of info. Have a public structure derived from the national healthcare in charge of it which enforces strong anonymity, and provide anonymity data to big data analysts. It wouldn't take long to figure out scandals such as the Mediator. I mean, if you can't take ONE minute to answer some questions that WILL help others, why should you get free health care ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
All the more incentive to go back to paper money.
Use debit / credit cards and open yourself to fraud and tracking, use cash and open yourself to robbery.
Either way, we lost the war. The corporations won.
The Public didn't even know there was a war on.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Quote: "You may soon get a call from your doctor if you've let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of ordering out for pizza or begin shopping at plus-sized stores...."
What utter idiot wrote that article. Unless your last name is Rockefeller, you're not going to get a call from your doctor over such things. They've got far better things to do with their time. If you get a call, it'd be from some unfortunate person who's being paid little more than minimum wage for the work.
This touches on one of my primary gripes with journalism, in this case Bloomberg. Journalism is filled with people who seemed to have no life experience in anything but journalism. They're clueless about how the world works and get their mistaken impressions of it from other equally clueless journalists.
While the theory of preventative care is great for marketing and selling the privacy intrusion to legislators, it has a negative impact on the bottom line. Ultimately the data is far more valuable to an insurance company than a healthcare provider.
Don't expect a call from your doctor, only an insurance rate increase notice in the mail.
It certainly would seem to be a violation of HIPPA for a hospital to be giving your information out to others without your consent. Now, if the hospital is using the data collection services and doing their own comparison, cross-referencing your medical history with your collected behaviors, that might be different. It is likely, that is not what is being done, or proposed, however.
In reality, it is also unlikely that the hospital will have enough data about you. Your insurance company would be a different story, but the same HIPPA concerns would exist.
Finally, as others have pointed out, it is unlikely that this information would result in a call from your doctor. It is much more likely you would receive targeted advertising from it, once again bringing into question HIPPA.
This sounds like another candidate for the adage: Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do it.
Hey, that data was meant for predatory capitalists to discover my purchasing weaknesses, not for well-meaning medical practitioners who want to individualize my medical treatment!
Finally correcting a thousands of years old typo.
Hypocrite oath.
"...made a habit of ordering out for pizza..."
Pay cash. Stop at Little Caesars. Done!
I'll be over here, waiting patiently for the tipping-point to occur, when all you 'I have nothing to hide!' and 'I don't care who knows what I buy/where I go/what I do so long as I get a discount' people who have deprecated the whole concept of privacy have finally had enough of companies (and in this case, doctors and maybe insurance companies) poking their noses into your business. Those 'loyalty club' cards you've been using for years? Because you never cared about your own privacy, you never thought to ask for the contract you agreed to by accepting the card and the discount, which gave them the right to collect all sorts of personally-identifiable data on your purchasing habits, did you? Did you really think they were giving you a discount on everything you bought there out of the goodness of their hearts? Because they're such nice people? Because 'insuring your continued business' was enough of a reason for them? HA! Enjoy having your doctor up your ass constantly, after all you got a whole $0.10 off that box of cereal you bought so it's worth it, right?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I started using cash for most of my "discretionary" purchases lately.
Things like grocery shopping, clothing, Home Depot, going to the bar, etc...
I initially started doing it because of how porous and UN-trustworthy the whole paradigm of card transactions is.
This article hits home on how using cash helps me in another way, being that my purchases can't be tracked.
You know it really is interesting seeing how (for lack of a better phrase) Orwellian the whole system is getting.
Interesting, as in Hindenburg appointing Hitler Chancellor in 1933...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If you thought the NSA was bad, wait till the medical and insurance providers get going.
Either the hospital goes to the company and says "here's a list of every patient we have, tell us everything you have", or the company brings it to them.
Telling the companies your patient list might be a violation of HIPAA.
If the company comes up the hospital and says "we have data on the following patients you have, want to buy it?", that's also a little shady.
If the hospital just buys data on everybody and sifts out the people they're interested in, well, that's downright creepy.
I just don't see how you can construct a scenario in which private companies are sharing data with hospitals without someone having been in possession of things they're not supposed to have.
To me, this is a huge violation of privacy and the rights of the patient, and is allowing corporations another way to profit from our personal data.
FTW, we're all screwed. Where's Tyler Durden when you need him?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If a hospital sends you a reminder like that, you can be sure a bill for it will soon follow.
Hospitals are required to submit data to health departments for public health reasons. This data is sent by requirement of law.
Sending it to a marketing third party is a big no-no due to HIPPA
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Who would ever even think of having access to that info, and use it to push medication onto people. Directly, or with marketing, or via the insurers, doctor, hospital, even public health, and even the IRS? You're just business, you know? What's wrong with that? Are you against "honets businesses" making a profit selling their products and services? Are you against increasing markets? Do you want to harm the profit of giant tyrannical glitzy smiling shining corporations, by reaping your own energy, or raising your own food? How dare you, scruffy peasant, even consider such blatant lèse-corporeté! Shame!
Sounds great - after all, it's to server me better! I'll just go ahead and assume that insurance companies have no interest at all in finding ways to charge me more money while adding to the list of pre-existing conditions they don't have to cover.
where we actually have privacy laws.
sucks to be an 'Murican