Last week, the California State Senate approved a bill that would allow pharmacies in the state "to sell confidential patient prescription information to third-party marketing firms working for drug companies," according to news reports.
The idea is being framed by the pharmacies and drug companies as a way to increase the quality of patient care. The drug companies would send patients mailings as reminders to take their prescriptions and to get them refilled. A patient could opt out of the mailings if they so desired.
Of course, the drug companies are lukewarm about having patients opt-in instead, for obvious reasons.
And both the pharmacies and drug companies are playing down how much money they are going to make by being able to directly target patients with advertising.
Expect to see patient medical information increasingly being sold and bought as more and more of it becomes electronic. Expect too to see future attempts to sell confidential information couched in this "increasing the quality of patient care" rhetoric. This currently seems to be a winning approach to overcoming privacy concerns.
My worry is if this becomes law in California which has one of the strongest medical privacy laws in the country, how quickly do you think this idea will spread across the nation?
And how quickly do you think Google and Microsoft will start arguing about the benefits to patients of their selling personal health record information to third parties?
