July 16,1998 Atlanta, Georgia CCHC is a three year old health care policy organization founded as a result of health care consolidation, a growing loss of medical confidentiality, and the elimination of many health care choices in the areas of insurance, treatment, and providers. We educate on health care policy and have a comprehensive website focused on health care reform policy issues and medical confidentiality. Today, I am grateful to have this opportunity to address the CDC committee which is looking at the vital privacy issues surrounding the implementation of immunization registries. The bottom line for confidentiality is parent and patient consent. While immunizations seem rather innocuous in terms of medical confidentiality, the National Immunization Program website page on Integration Support demonstrates that the registry will not contain only immunization information.
Future plans are to integrate the registry with complete patient records.
In Minnesota, a staff member of a community-based immunization registry recently stated to a visitor that they are waiting for the implementation of a National Provider Identifier and a Unique Patient Identifier in order to link immunization registries with other health care databases. If there is no requirement for informed and voluntary consent, it should be clear that this seemingly harmless breach of medical confidentiality will be used to support further breaches of confidentiality with information much more sensitive. The effect of such breaches by state and federal agencies will have a detrimental effect on the entire health care system. Patients will fear repercussions from their health care histories. Persons concerned with preserving the excellence of our health care system should take into consideration the inaccurate or delayed diagnoses that can result from a patient's unwillingness to divulge sensitive information to physicians and providers.