Yesterday, Phil Galewitz reported for Kaiser Health News (reprinted in USA Today) on a practice that is one of my biggest disappointments in our health care system, the sale of our personal health information for the benefit of someone else. I do not mean the use of de-identified medical information to improve public health, medical quality, enhancement our ability to treat disease, or even for law enforcement. I am talking about the use of your individual health information to try to sell you something else that you may or not need. Did you ever wonder why all of a sudden you started getting ads for diabetes supplies? Or why ads for erectile dysfunction started arriving in your mailbox as well as your email? It is because your personally identifiable medical information is being shared to improve the bottom lines of those who have access to your medical records. The story highlighted the practices of hospitals that use information from their medical records to peddle other services to their current or former patients Partnering with mass marketing companies, your hospital knows a lot more about you than is present in their records. For example, if you smoke, you get a directed ad for lung cancer screening. Believe me, when you come in for a “screening,” something can almost always be found that ”needs” to be done. Screening can be a hospital’s or doctor’s best friend. It all depends on how ethical or financially strapped the provider is that determines how far evidence-based scientific medical practice will be stretched. Examples of abuse are easy to find. Continue reading “Loss of Medical Privacy? Is that OK?”