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Privacy advocates urge Congress to ensure e-prescription laws protect information

EHR Connection, June 2, 2008

The Coalition for Patient Privacy, a group of 25 organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, American Council for the Blind, and National Association of Social Workers, have joined forces in urging Congress to include privacy protections in any federal e-prescribing legislation, according to a May 11 press release.

Deborah Peel, MD, founder of Patient Privacy Rights and a leader of the coalition formed in 2006, explained the need for privacy in e-prescribing. “Our current system allows every prescription in the United States to be data mined and sold,” she said in a press release announcing the coalition’s May 11 letter to Congress. “This has been the reality for over a decade. You cannot keep a prescription private in the U.S. or stop your data from being sold, even if you pay cash.”

“The future impact of greatly expanding the electronic transmission of our private prescription records without privacy will undoubtedly result in a vast array of unintended consequences. Those consequences may include breaches of private information and ultimately discrimination based on illness or genetic risk of disease,” the coalition said in its letter to Congress.

Click here to read the press release.

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