What is the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court case involving nurse Barbara Clark and the Adventist health System – West in Roseville, California?

Few American understand that there really is NO confidentiality or patient privacy concerning medical records created by physicians and medical staff. Although often trumpeted, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 offers little protection to patients. In fact, HIPAA is an open-ended hunting license for credit bureaus, insurance companies and self-insured employers to engage in data mining of confidential medical information.

Data mining is the privacy destroying practice of searching medical records in a cross indexing fashion. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been experimenting with such projects under the N-Dex program; a vast database that matches utility bills, civil judgments, divorce decrees, child support payments, social security payments, search warrants, arrest records, etc.

Reportedly, HIPAA provides criminal liability for the malicious acquisition of a patient’s protected health information (PHI). However, only two individuals have been prosecuted under HIPAA since 1996. One criminal was associated with the infamous Eric Drew case of Seattle, Washington. In that case, an employee of a blood clinic stole the identity of Eric Drew, thought to be terminally ill. When Mr. Drew discovered that he suffered the near fatal illness he also discovered $20,000 in credit card debt as he was the victim of identity theft.

Suffice to say that HIPAA is essentially a toothless tiger when it comes to enforcement proceedings against those individuals that use personal patient information (PHI) for a malicious purpose.

America is posed upon the threshold of a new era in population control with the deployment of the National Health Information Network (NHIN), which claims to link Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). The goal of this system will be to create EMRs that can be search and analyzed by supercomputers. This will allow those businesses and agencies with such capabilities to access PHI in an unfettered manner.

Thus, genetic screening, pre-employment health risks, drug abuse screening, psychiatric screening, etc., etc., can be accomplished in seconds. Such cross-indexing and data mining of millions of records can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MASS) has introduced legislation, known as Senate Bill 1693, (January 2008) to speed up the deployment of the NHIN and national EMR systems.

It is believed that the Adventist Health System – West data center (Roseville, California 95666) will have a pivotal role in this deployment. This data center interconnects twenty (20) Adventists hospitals in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington state. The Adventist data center is in very close proximity with the State of California Teale Data Center, operated by the State of California (for the third party benefit payments of MediCal).

Once the Adventist data center becomes operational and cross linked with the Teale data center (in nearby Rancho Cordova) the cross-indexing and search capabilities of nearly 46 Million people will be accomplished.