Is your doctor selling your info?

A while back I went to my doctor at broadlands family practice to get my physical. To get my results, I had to fill out this thing online

http://www.mypreventivecare.com

I noticed they said something like "your doctor did not provide this information, please complete".

I then thought to myself part way through the questions - no kidding! Probably because it is not allowed by law.

I stopped and I was going to quit the whole thing and it turns out I did not need to fill out that info to see the results - however they made it seem like part of the steps I needed to complete.

I read their privacy policy and yep it was to sell my info!

Just wanted to put this out there

1- so others do not get suckered

2- to hopefully shame broadlands family practice into stopping this

3- so they don't change their privacy policy further to link with facebook accounts in the future

This is just shady in my opinion

 

I accessed the site for test results too and discovered the same thing. Glad you mentioned it here because many Broadlands families patronize the practice.

 

BFP is in steep decline - essentially a pill dispenser now. Have been going there for four years and have only seen a doctor once.

 

https://secure.mypreventivecare.com/Default.aspx?tabid=40&ctl=Privacy

?

It looks like it is based on a program developed at VCU to facilitate better communication... http://www.research.vcu.edu/ott/licensable_technologies/flash/KRI-10-36.htm

 

I've been a patient of Broadlands Family Practice for nine years and I think the quality of care has remained consistent relative to the growth of their patient base over the years. I never have to wait a long time to be seen, the location is convenient and the health staff are wonderful.

My only negative is the on-line access tool, "My Preventive Care."

 

I can't tell who these guys work for, anyway here are some general comments

"MyPreventiveCare also uses your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from MyPreventiveCare and its affiliates."

Are they not getting paid for this?

"MyPreventiveCare may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you."

Really? I just wanted to access my info

"In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party."

Until they update the privacy policy...I prefer to spend my time keeping up to date on the latest privacy policy...

"In addition, MyPreventiveCare may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries."

Ah very good, sharing with trusted partners. So nice to share.

"All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to MyPreventiveCare, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information"

I'm sure they'll do a good job

For the record I am very happy with the service and the doctor there, but this is uncool.

 

Has anyone else been spammed after creating an account on this site?

 

“Broadlands Family Practice appreciates the concerns posted on this website. We agree and believe that everyone needs to be careful about who they give their health information to and how it is used. We would like to clarify the purpose of MyPreventiveCare and how the information is used.

1. MyPreventiveCare is a website created by Broadlands Family Practice, Fairfax Family Practice Centers, and Virginia Commonwealth University to improve health and help patients. It is not a ploy to obtain patient’s information. It is not run by a commercial vendor and our informatics staff control the site and server it is hosted on.

2. MyPreventiveCare is our effort to try to give our patients increased access to their health information. It shows our patients their lab results, assesses our patient’s prevention needs, provides health recommendations, and gives patients links to resources to help manage health. In fact the design of MyPreventiveCare is based on a model that we created to make health information technology more patient-centered (see our article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245186).

3. The purpose of MyPreventiveCare is to help patients get the preventive and chronic care services they need. We created the website through a series of research grants funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Our studies show that patients who use MyPreventiveCare are 5-16% more up-to-date on recommended preventive services than patients who do not. In fact, our development and testing of MyPreventiveCare is featured as one of AHRQ’s research success stories (see, “Patients Take a Bite of the Prevention Apple with a Web-based Interactive Personal Health Record” at http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt/community/ahrq-funded_projects/654/health_it_portfolio_featured_projects/21116)

4. When our patients create a MyPreventiveCare account, the site asks men 10 questions and women 12 questions. MyPreventiveCare gives patients very personalized prevention and chronic care recommendations based on their history and national guidelines. This information is needed to make the personal recommendations. For example, if you say that you have a family history of a close relative with colon cancer then the website will give you different recommendations for colon cancer screening than someone who has no family history.

5. Finally, NO INFORMATION is sold or given to anyone. The only people who can access the sites information is the person who creates the account and their doctor. Click on the video “Take a Tour” on the site to learn more about our privacy information. We did identify that the privacy statement on the site was not correct. It was a standard website statement placed as a placeholder by our programmers. We are correcting this immediately.

We recognize that using an online personal health record is not right for everyone. We do not want our patients to use something that makes them uncomfortable. We also recognize that in today’s information age, people should have access to their health information whenever they want. This is our effort to lead the way in making health information available and actionable for our patients.”


If you have further questions, please feel free to call Shawn - Brambleton Office Manager at 703-722-2312.

 

I thought it wasn't evil =)

I'd like to know how the web site cost $2m though:

A trio of grants totaling $2 million supports the department's investigation into whether My Preventive Care can improve patients' use of preventive care services.

 

Well, that's slightly better. Sure would have been nice if you would have said all this info on the website, and checked to see that privacy was stated CORRECTLY in the first place.

I mean, who would care about that...since the questions that were asked were ones that could be used to DENY insurance coverage.

If I remember right, questions were smoking, also heart disease, race...

If I've gotten them wrong please feel free to clarify. Also, it would be nice to TELL people AT THE OFFICE that they do not have to answer these questions to SEE their results.

Or, perhaps that they have a choice. As opposed to the option which while providing some value potentially also keeps your costs low by not having to take the time to communicate with your patient(s) if nothing is wrong.

 

Holy cow nova, you are really bent out of shape over this... nice attitude.

 

I wish I could be that trusting. As long as you are in good health things are fine.

You know when it comes to some of the people who have been denied health insurance and/or coverage and the reasons...yeah I get a little worked up.

Sometime take the time to talk to people who work around here, more than a few are working a cash register just to have health insurance. My work here is done, gonna go relax...and give thanks

 

I didn't know at first either, so I did research, saw it was a program through VCU and the family practice group, saw the domain was owned by them as well (not some third party)...

Happy gobble gobble!

 

Boomer, I think Nova is lumping this into all of those new "wellness" surveys employers are using to get discounts on healthcare. Basically legally binding surveys with horrible privacy considerations.

In this case, it seems that the goal of this service is not the same, but unfortunately is using the same techniques as the less considerate sites.

It is sort of like when a charity uses a telemarketer for donations. I may agree with the charity, but the execution causes ill will.

Specifically:

http://epic.org/privacy/cloudcomputing/

"Although federal law allows for patient record privacy though the Health Insurance Portability Protection Act (HIPPA), the records created by WebMD and other health cloud computing services are not covered by HIPPA. WebMD states in its Terms and Conditions of Use that the company will not be liable for any damages."

 

For more information:

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html