States questioned for selling patient records, risking privacy | MassDevice.com On Call

June 6, 2013 By Sony Salzman Leave a Comment

MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Health records from hospitals in 26 states that was later sold to researchers and companies contained data that could be linked to individuals, raising concerns about how differing levels of compliance with data redaction standards put patients’ privacy at risk, Bloomberg reported.

Some of the data contained personal identifying information such as age or zip code, according to the news service.

In 1 instance, data from a set of 650,000 hospitalization records sent by Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Wash., to that state’s health department was later traced back to Ray Boylston, the victim of a motorcycle accident, by Bloomberg.

"Hospitals in Washington, and other states, are required by state law to provide patient discharge data to the state department of health. It is the state that is making portions of the records, scrubbed of identifying information, available – not the hospital," a Providence Sacred Heart spokeswoman told MassDevice.com today in an email..*

But state public health agencies, including those in the Evergreen State, aren’t bound by the privacy rules enshrined in the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act. Only some states abide by the guidelines, which mandate the redaction of all identifying information from medical records before they are sold to outside parties.

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*Correction, June 6, 2013: Due to a reporter’s error, this article originally mis-stated the nature of the transaction regarding patient data between the state of Washington and Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. Return to the corrected sentence.

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