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FTC: Online Billing Service Deceptively Collected Medical Records

Posted by samzenpus on from the tell-us-everything dept.

itwbennett writes The FTC has reached a proposed settlement with PaymentsMD, an Atlanta health billing company that used the sign-up process for its billing service to surreptitiously seek customers' consent to obtain detailed medical information. The medical information PaymentsMD requested included customers' prescriptions, procedures, medical diagnoses, lab tests performed and their results, and other information, the FTC said. The bright spot in all this: In all but one case, the health care providers contacted for data refused to comply with PaymentsMD's requests.

4 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. I take it by msobkow · · Score: 2

    I take it the one medical provider who had the major screwup of providing such personal and private data has had their license revoked and is now out of business?

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:I take it by sribe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I take it the one medical provider who had the major screwup of providing such personal and private data has had their license revoked and is now out of business?

      Why? If someone comes to your doctor with a release approved by you for your medical information, do you really expect your doctor to give them the third degree over exactly how they obtained that release from you?

      Personally, I think it's remarkable that so many providers were apparently paying enough attention to notice some irregularity and question the requests.

  2. BILLER, not PAYER by jtara · · Score: 2

    It just seems to make sense to me that a payer of medical bills would collect information that would confirm the validity of the bills that they were paying. Sharing that aforesaid information is a totally different ball of wax though.

    No. did you bother to read the very first paragraph?

    An online service allowing consumers to pay their medical bills failed to adequately inform them that it would also try to collect highly detailed medical information |from their pharmacies, medical labs and insurance companies, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said.

    They send out bills. Patients send them money. They send money to the doctor or hospital. They keep ledgers.

    They don't need to know detailed medical information. They are acting as a billing agent for the doctor. They don't need to verify what the doctor did or what the patient had.

    1. Re:BILLER, not PAYER by cdrudge · · Score: 2

      They send out bills. Patients send them money. They send money to the doctor or hospital. They keep ledgers.

      They don't need to know detailed medical information.

      Almost every bill that I've received has a diagnostic code on it, or a semi-detailed description of what the charge was for. My chiropractor bill showed which specific vertebrae was the focus of the adjustment. My dentist bill had that I had a cavity filled on a particular tooth. The supplier for my CPAP machine listed all the accessories I purchased for my sleep apnea. In all 3 cases, I paid my bill with my flexible spending account debit card, and my insurance company wanted a copy of the detailed bill to insure compliance required by the IRS. If any of those 3 providers used a 3rd party billing company, that company would need to know what the charges were for to include in the invoice. They wouldn't need to know specific results of a lab, or what a prescription was written for (unless they were billing on behalf of say a mail-order pharmacy), but saying they don't need to know detailed medical information isn't completely true. They need to know more than just you owe $X to Dr. Smith.