Colorado Law Blog

Parents of teenagers worry about lots of things: drugs, sex, poor choices of friends. But the activity that poses the greatest danger to your child is driving the family car.

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 16- to 20-year-olds, with about 5,500 teenage drivers or passengers dying each year. In addition, about 450,000 teenagers are injured, 27,000 of them requiring hospitalization, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in the December issue of its journal, Pediatrics.

Of those who are killed, 63 percent are drivers and 37 percent are passengers, with boys accounting for two-thirds of the fatalities. Although teenagers represent only 6 percent of drivers, they are involved in 14 percent of fatal crashes. And the crash rate among the youngest drivers — 35 crashes per million miles driven by 16-year-olds — is nearly nine times the rate of the general population.

Although factors like alcohol, drugs and distractions like ipods and cellphones naturally come to mind, the single biggest reason for both fatal and nonfatal crashes involving teenage drivers is inexperience. In one study, the highest crash rate occurred during the first month after teenagers got their license. That rate, 120 crashes per 10,000 drivers, dropped to 70 crashes within five months.

Traditional driver education programs, which offer 30 hours of classroom instruction but only 6 hours of on-the-road training, “are not effective in creating safe drivers and decreasing crash risk,” according to the academy’s review of research. “In fact, some studies show that high school driver education programs encourage early licensure of the youngest, most dangerous drivers, with resulting increased crashes, injuries and deaths.”

Of course, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs, including prescribed and over-the-counter medications, are prominent factors in crashes involving teenagers. Though teenagers drink and drive less often than adults, they are more likely to crash when they do drink, especially at low and moderate blood-alcohol levels.

Distractions inside the vehicle contribute to accidents for both teenage and adult drivers. But distractions are a more serious problem for novice drivers because they tend to look away from the road for longer periods and may then drift out of their lane or fail to respond in time to a hazard.

The academy noted that “eating, drinking and adjusting the radio or the climate controls each cause more crashes than cellular phone use.” Hands-free cellphones have not reduced the risk significantly, the academy said.

Teenagers also are much less likely than adults to wear seat belts, especially when driving with other teenagers. And their use of belts is least likely in the most dangerous of conditions: when driving at night, under the influence of alcohol or with several teenage passengers. In crashes that occurred in 2004, 58 percent of the teenage occupants who were killed were not wearing a seat belt.

Nearly all states have so-called graduated licensing laws, some of which significantly increase the number of supervised hours of driving by teenagers while they are learning. These laws force a new driver to pass three stages: a learner’s permit, an intermediate or provisional stage and finally a regular driver’s license. For each stage, there are restrictions and minimum time requirements, and proficiency in driving skills must be demonstrated before the teenager can graduate to the next stage.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that in the 23 states (as well as the District of Columbia) with the best licensing laws, fatal crashes involving drivers ages 15 to 17 declined by 19 percent since those laws started taking effect in the mid-1990s. States with weaker laws experienced no benefit, the institute says. Even in states that have not adopted all the elements of graduated licensing, restrictions involving night driving and the number of teenage passengers have been found to improve driving safety.

While many states exempt school, work and religious activities from nighttime driving restrictions (the idea is to limit high-risk recreational driving at night), those states with restrictions that start before midnight have experienced a 13 percent decline in evening crash fatalities among drivers ages 15 to 17. As many as 58 percent of fatal nighttime crashes by teenage drivers occur in the three hours before midnight.

Parents should consider restrictions on night driving, the number of teenage passengers, driving in bad weather and adjusting the stereo while driving. Teenagers should also promise to call a parent for a ride if they are impaired in any way that can impede safe driving.

The academy recommends strict restrictions for the first six months, including a ban on teenage passengers and no driving after 9 p.m., for example, then gradual relaxation of restrictions if the teenager continues to demonstrate the ability to drive without committing a moving violation or getting into an accident.

For those young drivers in Colorado, many of the academy’s suggestions are already law. To gain a driver education permit, the driver must be at least 15 years old, and must present an Affidavit of Enrollment in Driver Education showing enrollment in a department-approved Driver Education Course that also offers behind the wheel instruction. For those minors 15 years 6 months - 16 years old, they may obtain a driver awareness permit after they have completed a 4-hour driver awareness program approved by the department.

To earn a minor instruction permit, available to minors 16 years to 21 years of age, the minors under 18 must submit a written log showing at least 50 hours of drive time experience at the time they apply for their Driver's License. Ten of those 50 hours must have been driven at night. Minors under 18 must hold the permit for a minimum of 12 months before applying for a Driver's License.

Regardless of when you got your license, if you are under 18 you cannot drive a vehicle carrying a passenger under 21 unless you have held your Driver's License for at least 6 months. And, you cannot drive a vehicle carrying more than one passenger under 21 unless you have held your Driver's License for at least one year. Exceptions to carrying passengers include when your parent or guardian is in the car with you, or the passengers under 21 are members of your immediate family and they are all wearing seatbelts.

For complete information about the Log Sheet and restrictions for drivers under 17 years of age, see the "Driver Time Log Sheet" on the Colorado Motor Vehicle Division Handbooks Web page.

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In the last two weeks we have experienced four major food recalls - tainted chicken breast strips, foul fresh cantaloupe, bad baby food (taking “organic” a little too far) and that most beloved of lunch-time standards, peanut butter gone bad.

According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a sample of the meat tested in Georgia was contaminated by Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause listeriosis, a rare but serious infection. There have been no reported cases of illness linked to the recalled chicken, the agency said. Consumers with questions about the recall should contact Kraft Consumer Response at (800) 871-7117.

In the case of the cantaloupes and peanut butter, the culprit was salmonella. The baby food was contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, which can cause botulism. Both are life-threatening illnesses.

Dole Fresh Fruit Co. recalled roughly 6,104 cartons of imported cantaloupes from Costa Rica that were distributed to wholesalers in the eastern United States and Quebec between Feb. 5 and Feb. 8, the Associated Press reported. There were no reports of illness. The FDA is urging consumers to wash the outer surface of cantaloupes and other melons with cool tap water before slicing into them.

Dole said the recalled cantaloupes have a light green skin and orange flesh, and were distributed for sale in bulk cardboard cartons, with nine, 12 or 15 cantaloupes to a carton. The recalled cartons are dark brown with "Dole Cantaloupes" in red lettering. They have a 13-digit number on a white tag pasted to the carton; the 10th digit is a "2."

Consumers with questions should call the store where they bought the cantaloupes or contact Dole at (800) 232-8888.

And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers late Friday not to use certain jars of Earth's Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley Wholesome Breakfast baby food because they may be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum,, a life-threatening illness.

The manufacturer, Hain Celestial Group of Melville, N.Y., initiated a recall on Feb. 9 of 4,072 cases of individual jars and 38,298 variety packs, the FDA said in a prepared statement. Production and distribution of the baby food has been suspended while the FDA and the company work to determine the source of the problem.

The food, part of the firm's "2nd Vegetables, Fruits and Blends" line intended for babies 6 months and older, was distributed through retail stores and also sold through the Earth's Best Website, the FDA said. The agency urged consumers to throw away any jars they might have. The affected baby food involves:

Earth's Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley Wholesome Breakfast (4.5 ounce jars) 23923-20223 PFGJ14NP EXP 14 SEP 08 A
Earth's Best Organic 2 Wholesome Breakfast Variety Pack (12 pack) 23923-20295 13 SEP 08
Earth's Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley (4.5 ounce jars within 12 pack) 23923-20223 PF6J14 NP EXP 14 SEP 08 A.
Consumers who have questions should contact Hain Celestial Group at 1-800-434-4246.

On February 14, 2007, FDA advised consumers not to eat any Peter Pan peanut butter purchased since May 2006 and not to eat Great Value peanut butter with a product code beginning with "2111" purchased since May 2006 because of risk of contamination with Salmonella Tennessee. Salmonella is a bacterium that causes foodborne illness, and “Tennessee” is a type of Salmonella. All Peter Pan peanut butter purchased since May 2006 is affected; only those jars of Great Value peanut butter purchased since May 2006 with a product code beginning with "2111” are affected. Although Great Value peanut butter with the specified product code has not been linked by CDC to the cases of Salmonella Tennessee infection, the product is manufactured in the same plant as Peter Pan peanut butter and, thus, is believed to be at similar risk of contamination. Great Value peanut butter made by manufacturers other than ConAgra is not affected.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified 290 people from 39 states who have gotten sick from Salmonella Tennessee, the Salmonella type associated with this outbreak. Forty six (46) patients are known to have been hospitalized and there have been no reported deaths.

The 39 states with reported illness are: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

FDA continues to advise consumers not to eat any Peter Pan peanut butter purchased since May 2006. FDA also continues to advise consumers not to eat any Great Value peanut butter purchased since May 2006 with product codes beginning with the numbers “2111” on the jar lid. All such products should be thrown out. If consumers cannot find a number on the jar lid or are unsure, the safest thing to do is to discard the product.

Individuals who have recently eaten the affected Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter and who have experienced any symptoms of Salmonella infection should contact their health care provider immediately. Symptoms include fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. For persons in poor health or with weakened immune systems, Salmonella can invade the bloodstream and cause life-threatening infections.

According to the CDC, there are an estimated 76 million cases of food-borne illness each year in the United States, the vast majority of which are mild and cause symptoms that last a day or two. Some cases are more serious, leading to 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths annually. The most severe cases tend to occur in the very old, the very young, and those with weakened immune systems.

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CNN recently released the results of an 18-month investigation into minor-impact soft-tissue injury crashes around the country, reporting what every personal injury lawyer already knows. According to CNN findings, most of the major insurance companies when faced with claims from such cases, have universally adopted a scorched-earth strategy since the 1990’s. The leaders in this strategy are the two largest insurers, Allstate and State Farm.

The minor-impact accidents are accidents in which there is little damage to the vehicle and the injuries to people are considered “soft tissue” injuries, such as whiplash - the type of injury that isn’t evident on an x-ray.

After a review of more than 6,000 company documents and court records, interviews with a dozen people nationwide, including former company insiders, and conversations with accident victims, CNN concluded: “If you challenge the offer by some insurance companies you will be left with no option but to go to court, where you will be dragged through the wringer.”

The cases, CNN found, illustrate a carefully developed strategy to make the victims look like they are trying to defraud the insurers. But documents CNN obtained indicate profit, not fraud, is the reason companies decided to play hardball in small accidents.

For Allstate and State Farm, according to documents obtained by CNN, the strategy was developed in the mid-1990s with the assistance of consulting giant McKinsey & Co.

Looking for a way to boost profits, McKinsey focused on soft-tissue injuries incurred in minor crashes. While the McKinsey documents -- numbered in the thousands -- are under seal in courts around the country, CNN gained access to several of them during a court hearing in Lexington, Kentucky.

Playing off Allstate's signature slogan, one document recommends the insurer put boxing gloves on its "good hands" for those who insist on going to court.

The strategy, according to former Allstate and State Farm employee Jim Mathis, relies on the three D's -- denying a claim, delaying settlement of the claim and defending against the claim in court. If you have never heard of the strategy, it's because insurance companies don't want you to know that they are paying out less and less for minor crashes even while their profits soar and your premiums continue to rise.

Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told CNN insurers do not have a strategy of blanket denial of claims. He also said strategies to limit expenditures on minor-impact crashes are needed to fight fraud.

As is typical for large corporations seeking justification for self-serving behavior, Hartwig specifically blamed lawyers who he claims make a living on car accident victims, saying those lawyers are upset because "the gravy train is over." Of course, that accusation ignores that the real parties bearing the burden of the bad faith behavior are the insurance companies own customers.

The full CNN article can be found at Auto Insurers Play Hardball.

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The American Bar Association, the nation's largest lawyers group, is taking on the National Rifle Association, the biggest gun rights organization. The issue is whether an employer has the right to bar workers from leaving guns in their cars while on the job.

The ABA frames the issue as workplace violence and how to reduce it. The ABA SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON GUN VIOLENCE has recommended the following resolution, “That the American Bar Association supports the traditional property rights of private employers and other private property owners to exclude from the workplace and other private property, persons in possession of firearms or other weapons and opposes federal, state, territorial and local legislation that abrogates those rights.”

The recommendation of the ABA committee is presented on the ABA website at AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON GUN VIOLENCE REPORT TO THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. The Background discussion begins:
On July 9, 2003, a disgruntled factory worker at a Lockheed Martin assembly plant in Meridian, Mississippi, retrieved a shotgun and semi-automatic rifle from his vehicle and went on a killing rampage in the plant, killing five and injuring nine co-workers before taking his own life. Afterward, investigators recovered three additional guns from the killer’s truck, which was parked 50 feet from the factory. This example is just one of thousands of incidents in which supervisors and co-workers have been shot by disgruntled employees, domestic violence has spilled over into the workplace, or other incidents of gun violence have taken place on business premises.

The report also cites federal estimates that roughly 1,000 people are killed at work each year and guns are used in 80 percent of those incidents.

The National Rifle Association frames the question as whether employees can protect themselves on their drive home. The powerful gun lobby has embarked on a state-by-state campaign to get legislatures to enact laws that require employers to allow their workers to bring guns on company parking lots.

In 2002, forest products giant Weyerhaeuser Corp. fired eight employees after guns were found in their cars on company lots. Federal courts have upheld the firings.

In response, the conservative Oklahoma Legislature passed a law that would prevent business owners from prohibiting guns inside locked vehicles on company property. Houston-based ConocoPhillips, which employs more than 3,000 people in Oklahoma, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The matter is still pending.

The NRA, meanwhile, began a boycott of the energy company's Conoco and Phillips 66 products and stepped up efforts to get other states to adopt laws similar to Oklahoma's.

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Botched plastic surgeries are not uncommon, nor is it uncommon for one to become the basis for a medical malpractice lawsuit. But one patient took the uncommon step of not only suing her plastic surgeon, but creating a website detailing her experience, www.mysurgerynightmare.com.

Georgette Gilbert explains on her website that she was seeking minor surgical work when she consulted with Dr. Jonathan Sykes. Dr. Sykes is a UC Davis plastic surgeon who frequently appears on TV news spots promoting plastic surgery and has been widely-published on the subject.

But Gilbert claims Dr. Sykes botched a brow lift which left her with what she describes as a permanently “surprised” look on her face. She presents before and after photos on her website to support her claims. She also asserts that she can no longer fully close her eyes and that her eyebrows are no longer at the same height. She disagreed with Dr. Sykes’ alleged assessment in a post-surgery visit that the results were “good and improving.”

Gilbert allegedly underwent four revision surgeries performed by other doctors to correct her problems. In early 2005, Gilbert launched a web site, detailing her experience with Dr. Sykes and UC Davis Medical Center, and of course, presenting the comparison photos. She also offers a list of “red flags” when choosing a surgeon and offers a page inviting reader feedback. On the home page, Gilbert disclosed that Sykes, director of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at UC Davis Medical Center, performed her procedure, and posted a list of other medical malpractice lawsuits allegedly filed against him.

“I was under the impression the result would be very subtle,” she writes on the site. “I really trusted this surgeon and thought he would do only what was in my best interest.

Gilbert filed her medical malpractice lawsuit against Sykes in California. Sykes asked Gilbert to pull her web site, and after she refused, he and the UC Regents filed a cross-complaint against her alleging the web site publications were defamatory and caused Sykes emotional distress and loss of business. Gilbert sought to dismiss the cross-complaint arguing that she was simply exercising her right of free speech in a public forum and in connection with a matter of public interest.

The trial judge found that the surgeon had met his burden of showing Gilbert had defamed him. Further, the judge ruled that Sykes was not a limited purpose figure and thus did not have to show Gilbert uttered her statements with actual malice in order to defeat her motion to strike.

But the California Court of Appeals saw it differently, ruling that Sykes in fact was a limited purpose public figure:

“Sykes’s sought-after prominence as an expert in and advocate for plastic surgery as a means of personal enhancement transformed him into a limited purpose public figure. As such, statements alleging that his surgical procedures resulted in disfigurement or required expensive multiple corrective surgeries are entitled to constitutional protection.”

The court called Sykes “an archetypal example” of a limited purpose public figure, saying Gilbert’s evidence showed Sykes thrust himself into the public debate about plastic surgery by writing articles for medical and other publications, appearing on local television shows, and otherwise “touting the virtues of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery.”

Therefore, the court wrote, Sykes was required to prove by clear and convincing evidence not only that the statements Gilbert made on her web site were false, but that they were published with actual malice.

Under that standard, the justices concluded Sykes did not prove a probability of prevailing on the merits of his defamation claim.

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In his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush called on Congress to restrict patient access to the courts, claiming that access to healthcare is threatened because “lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice.” But, according to statistics published by the American Medical Association (AMA), the number of practicing physicians is growing faster than the population.

President Bush has also described physicians’ malpractice insurance premiums as “skyrocketing” because of medical malpractice lawsuits. But in Florida, one of the states characterized by the AMA as being in “crisis,” the Office of Insurance Regulation reported that the 15 largest medical malpractice insurers saw profits of $803 million in 2005.

Many consumer advocates see this attack on patient rights as just one piece of a larger effort by the business lobby to protect businesses from being held accountable when they recklessly or negligently hurt people.

Public Citizen, a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization representing consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts, reviewed the most recent publicly available data from the federal government’s National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). The NPDB contains data on malpractice payments made on behalf of doctors as well as information about disciplinary actions against them by state medical boards or hospitals. Most payers of malpractice claims are insurance companies; but the data also includes payments by entities such as state-run insurance funds and self-insured health care providers.

The data shows that the court-based compensation system is, on the whole, a rational one that provides money for valid claims and dismisses invalid ones. These findings are confirmed by other research, including a recent study conducted by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, see Claims, Errors and Compensation

Public Citizen examined the issue of medical liability, concluding that the NPDB data shows that the claims of the business and medical lobbies are exaggerated and unsupported by the facts. Fundamentally, an agenda that blames injured patients and seeks to close access to the courts – contravening a Constitutional right – is about protecting business profits over patient health. It is far past time for real health care reform, and for a health care system that puts patient safety first.

Public Citizen Key Findings

Medical Malpractice Payments Are Actually Declining. The number and the total value of malpractice payments to patients have been flat since 1991. Both show a significant decline since 2001, when the last so-called “crisis” began. The number of malpractice payments declined 15.4 percent between 1991 and 2005. Adjusted for inflation, the average annual payment for verdicts declined 8 percent between 1991 and 2005.
Payments for million-dollar verdicts were less than 3 percent of all payments in 2005.

Payments Correspond to Severity of Injury. The medical liability system is not irrational – patients do not win big jury awards for frivolous claims. Instead, evidence shows the current system works reasonably well. Patients with minor injuries receive little compensation, while the bulk of malpractice awards occur in cases involving severely debilitating injuries or death. Over 64 percent of payments in 2005 involved death, or major or significant injuries. Payments for “insignificant injury” were less than one-third of 1 percent of payments in 2005.

Patient Safety Is the Real Crisis. The latest NPDB data underscore the fact that the real medical malpractice crisis continues to be inadequate patient safety, rather than the legal system. Instead of being distracted by business lobby myths about the court system, heath care providers should improve patient safety and better protect the health of patients.

Improving Patient Safety Will Save Lives. One-third of malpractice cases resulting in a malpractice payment in 2005 (4,504) involved the death of a patient. Yet, as a 1999 landmark study by the Institute of Medicine showed, an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 patient deaths occur each year as a result of preventable medical errors in hospitals. Stemming preventable errors alone would, conservatively, prevent ten times as many deaths as are now accounted for by malpractice cases.

For the complete article on the Public Citizen Study, click here.

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Almost weekly, there is another report of previously unpublicized side effects of a prescription medicine currently being prescribed to American patients. . Most notably, in late 2004, Merck withdrew its arthritis drug, Vioxx, after a study was made public which showed that it doubled the risks of heart attack. About the same time, the Food and Drug Administration announced that antidepressants cause some teenagers to think more about suicide.

Things may be improving for the average patient, FDA announced last week that changes were being made which were intended to ensure that marketed drugs are as safe as advertised. A significant step is the first effort to do a comprehensive safety assessment of approved drugs 18 months after introduction to the market. And the FDA will collaborate with the Veterans Health Administration to track how real patients fare after taking drugs. . The agency also will create an advisory panel to improve communications on safety concerns.

In both the Vioxx case and the antidepressants, the FDA took years to acknowledge risks that were well documented by researchers, and that threatened the safety of millions of patients. Last September, the Institute of Medicine released a critical report, concluding that the FDA was rife with internal squabbles and hobbled by under-financing, poor management and outdated regulations. The institute, the most important medical advisory organization in the country, suggested that the agency undergo 25 major changes, many of which would require Congressional authorization.

The new efforts will include creation of a database of genetic codes associated with bad drug outcomes, the development of a computer model to identify patients who are most likely to suffer liver injury, and the design of screening tests that would identify patients most at risk of general drug problems.

The announced changes will address some of the problems highlighted by the institute, but does nothing to help the chronic shortage of government money. The FDA has regulatory authority over about a quarter of the American economy. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency was asked to increase its efforts to prevent bioterrorism. Yet the FDA budget has remained flat for years.

There are now thousands of drugs in routine use and assessing which of these medicines may have undiscovered side effects will be very costly. The FDA gets about $400 million of its $1.9 billion budget from fees assessed on drug makers. Under a formula negotiated with the drug industry, this money comes with strings attached. One restriction was that the FDA. could use little of the money to track the safety of approved drugs.

That negotiated agreement between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry expires this year, and the drug companies have agreed to allow more of their money to be used for the planned post-market safety assessments. Whether those fees are enough, whether there should be any strings attached to them and whether that money should be coming from drug makers at all has become the subject of fierce debate.

The new plan promises to return the FDA to its scientific roots. Once home to state-of-the-art laboratories that conducted original studies to assess drug risks, the FDA now looks to drug companies for the actual testing. The FDA labs were largely eliminated in the past decade to free more money for the drug-approval process and the support of a elementary computer program to track side effects of drugs.

But in the past two years, the agency has refocused on the science of drug safety, making itself an active participant in scientific endeavors once left exclusively to drug makers and basic scientists.

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According to the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, an Austin-based watchdog group, some 800,000 companies, government agencies and other organizations can tap into personal medical information almost at will. Pharmaceutical information is mined daily, your prescriptions, are an open book to all sorts of companies that don't have to tell you what they're doing with the information.

When Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996, (HIPPA) it told the Department of Health and Human Services to require patient consent before records could be disclosed. This requirement prevents doctors or medical care facilities from releasing information about your condition or treatment without your permission. HIPAA was written to allow the sharing of medical information among health care providers, acknowledging the electronic management of files. The hope is that electronic medical records would help reduce health care costs.

However, in 2002, the Department of Health changed the wording of its rules to eliminate the consent requirement as it relates to treatment, payment or health care operations, an ill-defined phrase that allows broad access to personal medical information.

The 2002 changes allowed the sharing of information not just among doctors, but also among other "covered entities," which can include business affiliates of health care organizations such as data clearinghouses, accounting firms, law firms and even banks.

A simple example, demonstrates the frightening extent to which your health history may creep into all aspects of your public life. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the government's banking regulator, has a policy saying that creditors aren't supposed to use medical data in determining whether a person is eligible for a loan. Yet, the policy provides that once obtained, creditors who have such information can share it with their "affiliates."

Once shared, it's considered credit information, not medical data. Consumer groups warn that such information can even find its way into our credit scores and might even affect the rate we pay on loans or our ability to get financing.

You can ask data collectors not to share your information, but under the federal guidelines, they can ignore your request, and most of them do. The data is too valuable to insurance companies, data miners and even marketers who are building a cottage industry selling customer information.

Late last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that some large companies are beginning to collect and store employee medical data in the name of cutting insurance costs. Employers have control vast electronic warehouses of their workers' personal information. Many informed consumers choose to pay for treatment in cash, to keep their name out of the system. So do many well-known athletes. But for most of us, foregoing insurance benefits is not an option so our most-intimate of information is out there for the data miners.

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