Move to collect medical data pits privacy against safety

Proponents say Minnesota's medical database "can't be hacked" and will allow better tracking of health trends.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Dec. 23/30, 2002.

Minnesota has experienced a collision of populist causes, as a drive to collect more information on the delivery of health care has crashed into the movement calling for less government and more privacy.

At issue is a plan to collect hospital discharge data and, eventually, health plan data to better manage chronic diseases and to study patient safety and epidemiological trends.

The Legislature actually approved the creation of a central medical database in 1993, but at the time it lacked the technology and wherewithal to develop a suitable system. In 1995, an organization known as the Citizens' Council on Health Care initiated its opposition to the database. It has stalled the plan up to now.

The issue heated up this fall when hearings were held, and the controversy was fully sparked Dec. 2, when Administrative Law Judge Allan W. Klein ruled that the creation of the database could go forward.

Since then, local talk radio programs have been fanning the flames, and the issue has been drawing the interest of the public and the attention of public officials. Tim Pawlenty, the state's Republican governor-elect, already has expressed his misgivings about the database and told KSTP-TV that the plan "goes too far in terms of collecting personally identifiable information relating to people's health conditions."

Minnesota Dept. of Health officials said 44 states already had some sort of data collection process, and Alana Knudson-Buresh, the senior health informatics analyst with the National Assn. of Health Data Organizations, added that this had been a consumer-driven process. [...]