Weak spots noted in health privacy rules

Provisions on patient consent and drug company marketing come up short, some say.

By Joyce Frieden, AMNews correspondent. Feb. 26, 2001.

Washington -- Anyone hoping that the new federal health privacy rules will make it easy for patients to opt out of drug company mass marketing efforts should think again, according to testimony at a recent Senate hearing on the regulation.

"There is a provision where someone could request, up front, not to have this information at all," said Leslie Aronovitz, director of program administration and integrity issues at the General Accounting Office's health care division. Aronovitz testified at the Feb. 8 Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee privacy hearing. "But it's very difficult to do, it's not well known, and in fact, there are questions as to whether it would actually work."

Aronovitz was responding to a question from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D, N.Y.) about whether the regulation's authors could have better protected people from unwanted advertising pitches. Clinton was talking not about television or print ads aimed at the general public, but about marketing materials that companies send to specific patients based on information about their individual diagnosis or treatment. "The idea of mass mailing [that kind of] information or telemarketing information remains troubling to a lot of people," she said.

The regulation states that companies may send marketing materials to patients as long as they explain how patients can opt out of future mailings. But that isn't good enough, said Donald Palmisano, MD, a member of the AMA Board of Trustees.

"Don't give those companies the first free shot at learning about patients' information and sending them one ad," he said. "Once you've breached confidentiality, you've breached it." [...]