Insurance Industry Accesssing Consumer Databases to Run Health "Credit" Checks

Posted by AlterNet Staff, The Washington Post at 6:31 AM on August 4, 2008.

Ellen Nakashima, writing in the Washington Post, reports:

Health and life insurance companies have access to a powerful new tool for evaluating whether to cover individual consumers: a health "credit report" drawn from databases containing prescription drug records on more than 200 million Americans.

Collecting and analyzing personal health information in commercial databases is a fledgling industry, but one poised to take off as the nation enters the age of electronic medical records. While lawmakers debate how best to oversee the shift to computerized records, some insurers have already begun testing systems that tap into not only prescription drug information, but also data about patients held by clinical and pathological laboratories.

Traditionally, insurance companies have judged an applicant's risk by gathering medical records from physicians' offices. But the new tools offer the advantage of being "electronic, fast and cheap," said Mark Franzen, managing director of Milliman IntelliScript, which provides consumers' personal drug profiles to insurers.

The trend holds promise for improved health care and cost savings, but privacy and consumer advocates fear it is taking place largely outside the scrutiny of federal health regulators and lawmakers.

[...]

But the practice also illustrates how electronic data gathered for one purpose can be used and marketed for another -- often without consumers' knowledge, privacy advocates say. And they argue that although consumers sign consent forms, they effectively have to authorize the data release if they want insurance.

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Ingenix's MedPoint tool provides insurers a "pharmacy risk score," or a number that represents an "expected risk" for a group of people, such as 30- to 35-year-old women who have taken prescription drugs, Stenson said. Higher scores imply higher medical costs.

Milliman's IntelliScript codes drugs red, yellow or green, according to the insurer's instructions, with red signaling the greatest risk, Franzen said. Red codes could include the so-called AIDS cocktail drugs and cancer medications, he said.

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Some health experts worry that insurance companies can make faulty assumptions by looking at prescription drug records, because many drugs have multiple uses. "I had a patient on Amitriptyline for migraines and they were denied life insurance because it's also an antidepressant," said physician Kate Atkinson of Amherst, Mass. "I had to explain it wasn't being used for depression." Another patient was on Prozac -- not for depression, but for menopausal hot flashes. "I wrote an appeal letter, and they still wouldn't give it to her," Atkinson said.

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A health privacy proposal pending in Congress would expand federal officials' ability to regulate such "downstream" organizations, audit their activities and impose civil fines. The bill also includes a prohibition on the sale of electronic medical records.

Tim Sparapani, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the products that Ingenix and Milliman are marketing represent the "commodification" of electronic medical records by third parties. "We've got to stop these practices before the marketplace is fully developed and patients lose all control over their medical information," he said.

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In February, the Federal Trade Commission issued an order saying that MedPoint and IntelliScript are consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so the companies must notify insurers that consumers denied insurance on the basis of these reports have the right to request a copy of the report and that errors be corrected. The FTC's order followed a settlement of allegations that the companies violated the credit-reporting law by failing to provide such notice to insurers.

Bob Gellman, an independent privacy consultant in Washington, said the FTC's decision not to fine the companies sends "the message that it is okay to ignore the law." That, he said, "is absolutely outrageous."

As more health records become electronic, he said, more parties will compete to sell more comprehensive patient data to insurers, driving down data prices. "It will all likely be lawful," Gellman said, "but consumers will likely continue to have no real meaningful choices if they want insurance."

Tagged as: healthcare, hiippa