Free Republic

The federal government funneled billions in subsidies to software vendors who overstated or deceived the government about what their products could do, according to whistleblowers.(LYDIA ZURAW/KHN) This story also ran on Fortune. This story can be republished for free (details). Derek Lewis was working as an electronic health records specialist for the nation’s largest hospital chain when he heard about software defects that might even “kill a patient.” The doctors at Midwest (City) Regional Medical Center in Oklahoma worried that the software failed to track some drug prescriptions or dosages properly, posing a “huge safety concern,” Lewis said. Lewis cited...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — First, authorities discovered a spine-chilling 2,246 fetal remains in the Illinois garage of an abortion doctor after his death. Then, investigators found “thousands” of abandoned medical records across his abortion clinics in Indiana, the Indiana attorney general announced on Friday, Sept. 20. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill called Dr. Ulrich Klopfer one “of the more notorious abortionists in the history of Indiana.” The doctor had “a record of deplorable conditions and violations of regulatory controls that are placed on these clinics,” Hill said. “He certainly was problematic in life, and as it turns out, continues to...

Democratic front-runner Joe Biden was speaking at a televised town hall Wednesday when the corner of his left eye appeared to fill with blood, bringing attention away from the issue of climate change at a time when his campaign is already batting back scrutiny about his age and health. The eye issue likely isn't serious and will go away on its own after a few days, but it came after reporters have been asking Biden about whether his age will get in the way of his pursuit of the White House and followed a string of verbal miscues. Biden is...

MISSOULA, Mont. — Governor Steve Bullock is set to sign an executive order Wednesday, establishing Big Sky Connect as Montana's health information exchange. The governor will also announce funding for the exchange. Supporters say the exchange lets doctors, nurses and health officials access and share medical records, to improve care, eliminate duplicative treatments, and cut costs.

An FBI agent who quit his top position over the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation is heading to Congress to testify. John Giacalone, who led the Clinton investigation for the first seven months, will reportedly expose former President Barack Obama and fired FBI Director James Comey for corruptly helping Clinton. There’s a massive media blackout on this because Giacalone is expected to testify that top brass at the FBI rigged the investigative process so that Clinton could skirt charges for clear violations of the law. Exposing Comey also shines a big light on Obama, who many believe...

Your digital footprint — how often you post on social media, how quickly you scroll through your contacts, how frequently you check your phone late at night — could hold clues to your physical and mental health. That is the theory behind an emerging field, digital phenotyping, that is trying to assess people’s well-being based on their interactions with digital devices. Researchers and technology companies are tracking users’ social media posts and clicks in search of behavior changes that could correlate with disease symptoms. Some of these services are opt-in. At least one is not. People typically touch their phones...

Princeton Community Hospital in rural West Virginia will scrap and replace its entire computer network after being struck by the cyberattack paralyzing computers globally. The cyberattack, known as Petya, froze the hospital's electronic medical record system early Tuesday, leaving doctors unable to review patients' medical history or transmit laboratory and pharmacy orders, said Rose Morgan, the hospital's vice president of patient care services. Officials were unable to restore services, and found there was no way to pay a ransom for the return of their system. So, after consulting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and cybersecurity experts, officials made the...

<p>More than a decade ago the media were excited that Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich had formed an alliance about reforming health care. In 2005 Dana Milbank wrote in gushing terms in the Washington Post about a joint appearance.</p> <p>Of course, they were not alone. President Bush had already embraced the idea in his State of the Union speech to Congress. He envisioned a new era of “improved information technology to prevent medical error and needless costs.”</p>

Michael Brown’s parents are objecting to a request from Ferguson for their son’s medical and academic records as the city defends itself against a lawsuit the parents filed over the 2014 police shooting death of the unarmed 18-year-old. Michael Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden, in December court filings, asked U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber in St. Louis to at least limit if not scuttle altogether a push by the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, its former police chief and the officer who shot their son to turn over the documents. The parents say the documents are irrelevant and that...

When a patient moves from one health system to another, there’s no guarantee his or her electronic medical records are compatible with the new system’s. The Department of Health and Human Services wants to change that, with a number of efforts aimed at making electronic health record technology more “interoperable.” But how does a health system measure “interoperability,” and how does the department know if it’s successful? HHS doesn’t know the answer -- and it’s looking to the public for help. In a new request for information, HHS is asking for input on metrics that could measure interoperability. The eventual...

Many Americans think the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects their medical privacy, but federal bureaucrats issue thousands of subpoenas every year without prior judicial approval to get around the law.“If you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy against government in your medical care, then where does it exist at all? If that’s not private, then what is?” Adam Bates, a criminal justice policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.Congress passed HIPAA in 1996 with a promise that it would clamp down on waste, fraud and abuse in the health care...

While focusing their resources and political energy on the NSA’s mass collection of metadata, privacy advocates have neglected the most dangerous institutionalized violations of the Fourth Amendment: administrative subpoenas. Now a United States District Court judge in Texas has ruled for the Drug Enforcement Agency that an administrative subpoena may be used to search medical records. It was inevitable, given the march towards illegally nullifying the Fourth Amendment through use of these judge-less bureaucrat warrants authorized by Congress. Administrative subpoenas are issued unilaterally by government agencies -- meaning without approval by neutral judges -- and without probable cause stated under...

The Sinister Bridge between Evidence-Based Medicine and Electronic Health Records. The Federal government is closing in on every aspect of our society. Medical data is one of several key components required to make their collection and consolidation complete. Words mean something. They are not just utterance or grunts. Yet, we have been taught to swallow words without really considering their meaning. In this, the corporate and governmental propaganda machine has succeeded well. We give up our lives based on a kind of mass failure to understand what is really meant by a word or a phrase. Weapons of Mass Destruction,...

More and more people are having the disturbing experience of seeing their doctors spend more time pecking at a computer keyboard than examining them. The doctors are entering data into their patients’ electronic health records (EHRs) in compliance with federal rules introduced a few years ago. EHRs drive doctors crazy. Their own experience tells them that electronic recordkeeping interferes with care, by taking time away from patients. In a survey conducted by the Deloitte consulting group, three of four doctors said EHRs are not worth the cost. The influential RAND Corporation, which had long endorsed EHRs, reported in 2013 that...

Physicians are now required to care more about billing codes than your personal care. That’s right; over the last few years doctors have been forced into ignoring their sacred Hippocratic Oath. The US government and the insurance mafia have put their whips into the backs of physicians. Electronic medical records (EMRs) regulations, a key component of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), require doctors to quiz patients about matters which often have nothing to do with the care of their patients. The data which the government demands (but does not pay the doctors to collect) all merges into various government databases,...

The bullying of the nation’s physicians continues apace, now turning to penalizing doctors who don’t meet the administration’s one-size-fits-all approach to medical records. Bruce Japsen of Forbes reports: More than 250,000 physicians and other health professionals are being notified as early as today that their payments from Medicare and Medicaid will be cut because they aren’t adequately using electronic health records in their practices, the Obama administration confirmed. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, known as CMS, is telling about 257,000 eligible medical care providers who are largely physicians that they will be paid 1 percent less in reimbursement...

Thomas Eric Duncan's temperature spiked to 103 degrees during the hours of his initial visit to an emergency room — a fever that was flagged with an exclamation point in the hospital's record-keeping system, his medical records show. Despite telling a nurse that he had recently been in Africa and displaying other symptoms that could indicate Ebola — fever, sharp headache and abdominal pain — the Liberian man who would become the only person to die from the disease in the U.S. underwent a battery of tests and was eventually sent home. Duncan's family provided his medical records to The...

A hacker successfully breached Healthcare.gov in July and uploaded “malicious software,” MarketWatch reports, citing federal officials. However, investigators said consumers’ personal information doesn’t appear to have been compromised or stolen. In a written statement, the Department of Health and Human Services noted that its review shows that the hacked server “did not contain consumer personal information; data was not transmitted outside the agency, and the website was not specifically targeted.” The statement also claimed that measures have been taken to “further strengthen security.”

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration closed three health facilities in 2012 but left behind tractors and a forklift, an unidentified medical specimen and boxes full of confidential patient and employee records, an audit released Thursday said. The Department of Human Services also failed to properly announce the closures — another state agency even delivered $1,000 worth of bread and juice to one facility a month after it closed, according to the report by Auditor General William Holland.

The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom. The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is currently seeking public comment on a 52-page draft of the proposed “National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018” (NHSS). The deadline for comment is 5 pm EST on May 21st. (See Draft National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018.pdf) “Health...