Elizabeth McMillan and Paul Bickford report:
The NWT health care system is back in the business of sending faxes, although under new conditions to tighten up security.
Daryl Dolynny, president of the NWT Pharmaceutical Association, says the Department of Health and Social Services should have given pharmacists a heads up before putting a hold on faxing all health records, including prescriptions. – Elizabeth McMillan/NNSL photo
On July 6, the Department of Health and Social Services temporarily stopped the faxing of all health records after several instances of records being faxed to the wrong place.
However, the suspension gradually eased throughout the week, and was affirmed to be over during an internal conference call on July 9 between the department and CEOs of the regional health authorities throughout the NWT.
Read more on Northern News Services
Mark Metherell reports:
Federal government auditors have overruled Medicare, calling on the agency to improve security of patient details held by pharmacists.
Patient information on the 200 million prescriptions pharmacists dispense each year are largely electronically held, which the Auditor-General, Ian McPhee, says ”continues to be an area of growing threats”.
In an audit report on the administration of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme released yesterday, Mr McPhee revealed a long-running turf war among three health agencies over responsibility for the PBS.
Read more in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Susan Heavey reports:
A Democratic proposal to ban the collection of doctors’ prescription records for marketing purposes is unlikely to be included as part of the Senate’s overall health reform bill, a Senate staff member said on Monday.
A member of the staff of Senator Herb Kohl, a main sponsor of the amendment, said the change was not likely to come up for a vote or be included as part of a package of changes to be offered later by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Read more on Reuters.
Andrew Zajac reports:
When your doctor writes you a prescription, that’s just between you, your doctor and maybe your health insurance company — right?
Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are looking over the doctor’s shoulder to keep track of how many prescriptions for each drug the physician is writing.
By obtaining data from pharmacies and health insurers, the drug companies learn the prescribing habits of thousands of doctors. That information has become not just a powerful sales and marketing tool for the pharmaceutical industry but also a source of growing concern among some elected officials, healthcare advocates and legal authorities.
The identity of patients is not disclosed in such data, but knowing in detail what individual doctors are prescribing enables drug makers to fine-tune their messages when sales reps call on doctors. They can lobby for use of an alternative drug made by their own company, for instance, bolstering the pitch with specially selected research data or free samples.
What worries some government officials and patient advocates is that keying sales tactics to an individual doctor’s prescribing preferences — known as data mining — may distort decision-making and fuel prescribing of new, high-cost drugs.
Read more in the L.A. Times.
Andrew Zajac reports:
When your doctors writes you a prescription, that’s just between you, your doctor, and maybe your health insurance company–right?
Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are also looking over the doctor’s shoulder, keeping track of how many prescriptions for whose drugs the individual physician is writing.
And that data on the prescribing habits of thousands of doctors has become a powerful sales and marketing tool for the pharmaceutical industry, but also a source of growing concern among some elected officials, healthcare advocates and legal authorities.
[...]
What worries some government officials and patient advocates is that sales tactics keyed to an individual doctor’s prescribing preferences may distort decision-making. That’s especially likely, the critics say, when many doctors have trouble finding time to examine a plethora of studies and weigh the results carefully. And, given the rising concern over costs, they say, free samples or other inducements could influence decisions for non-medical reasons.
The practice is known as “prescription data mining.” Medical data firms annually blend several billion prescription records purchased from pharmacies and health insurers with physician data from the American Medical Association and other sources and sell the results to drug companies.
Read more in the Baltimore Sun.
Comments Off 
Themocracy