Patient Privacy Group Denounces Wal-Mart Stores and Intel Corp. Plan To Store Employee Health Records in Data Warehouse

Patient Privacy Group Denounces Wal-Mart Stores and Intel Corp. Plan To Store Employee Health Records in Data Warehouse

Employees Do Not Want Employers To Access Medical Records

AUSTIN, TX Patient Privacy Rights Foundation today denounced the plan by Wal-Mart Stores, Intel, and others, to store their employees’ records in a centralized data warehouse linking hospitals, doctors and pharmacies.

“This is a prescription for disaster,” said Deborah Peel, MD, founder and chair of Patient Privacy Rights. “Employees’ sensitive medical records will be held in an employer-controlled database. Will these companies guarantee that employees’ personal health information will never be used against them or disclosed without informed consent?”

Wal-Mart Stores plans to use their clout to apply market pressure and incentives to get hospitals and doctors on board, and will insist that health-care providers adopt electronic records and prescribing as a condition of future business.

“Electronic health records are essentially a good idea. They can save time, money and lives. But, American health consumers have said repeatedly that they do not want their employers or their insurers to have access to their records,” Dr. Peel said. “There is a better way to do this.”

Patient Privacy Rights recommends:

* Patient data should not be housed by employers; instead, it should be housed by a neutral third-party such as a health banking repository owned by consumers.
* Employees should control access to their own data.
* Employees should be asked permission before any individual or business entity can access their health information.
* Employers should never be allowed to access or use the data, even if “de-identified”.
* Employers should never be allowed to require that employees’ permit them to access medical data as a condition for employment or insurance coverage.

Unless these conditions are met, Patient Privacy Rights urges patients not to participate in this plan.

About Patient Privacy Rights

Patient Privacy Rights is a national consumer watchdog organization based in Austin, TX. The mission of Patient Privacy Rights is to empower Americans to protect and preserve their human rights to medical privacy. Patient Privacy Rights believes Americans should have the right to decide who can see and use their medical records and is educating Americans about threats to patient privacy. They have launched an online petition for Americans to tell Congress “I Want My Medical Privacy”.

Web site: http://www.patientprivacyrights.org/