Find yourself lying in a city ambulance and your personal health information could be sold to the highest bidder.
The FDNY has issued a murky patient-privacy notice that says it may use a patient’s “protected health information (PHI),” including everything from address and phone number to prescriptions and medical history, for fund-raising and marketing — and maybe even for sale.
It’s enough to give patients’ advocates and privacy experts a coronary.
“It’s a violation of patient trust,” said Arthur Levin, executive director of the Center for Medical Consumers in Manhattan. “Selling personal health information is something the public really worries about.”
Pharmaceutical and medical-device firms, drugstore chains, insurers, nursing homes and other companies will pay big bucks for the data to boost their profits, experts say.
The FDNY, which treats and transports thousands of patients a year, holds a potential gold mine of info on people’s health problems and needs.
“They’re sitting on a very valuable data bank,” said a top New York health-care lawyer.
He fears it could lead to patients getting hit up by medical merchants.
“You don’t want to come home and find letters from companies saying, ‘We understand you had an emergency. These drugs or devices may be helpful to you,’ ” the lawyer said.
Public-health agencies are exempt from a federal law that bars private health-care providers and contractors from releasing patient data.
Demand is huge. The medical-data industry is expected to top $10 billion by 2020, McKinsey & Co. reports, especially since ObamaCare mandates electronic records. City ambulances now record patient info on computers.
The FDNY’s recently updated notice says patient info can be used for “business-planning purposes, military/national defense and certain law-enforcement purposes.”
“What’s that have to do with health-care operations? Zero,” said Manhattan personal-injury lawyer Pasquale Vairo.
It adds, “We may also use and disclose your PHI for certain marketing and fund-raising activities.”
Officials said the FDNY is unaware of any such use, but “reserves the right to do so.”
The notice also raises the possibility of “the sale of your PHI or the use of your PHI for marketing purposes,” but only “after you have given your authorization in writing.”
“The FDNY does not sell patient information,” said spokeswoman Elisheva Zakheim, but officials said it may do so in the future.
The FDNY would require a signature to release patient info for reasons other than treatment, payment and health-care operations, she said.
New Yorkers treated by FDNY medics should be handed a privacy-disclosure form, officials said.The green sheet, which medics said is “scarce,” makes no mention of fund-raising, marketing or selling data. It refers patients to the FDNY Web site, which posts the notice.