WASHINGTON — A proposed second national identification number, this one tracking the medical history of every American, was assailed Monday by critics on both the right and the left, who warned of government intrusion into personal privacy.
An unlikely combination of privacy experts, conservative groups and the American Medical Assn. said that they fear every medical detail of a patient's life potentially could be available to insurance companies, employers and anybody else who could get access to a patient's identification number.
"If a patient has a unique identification number, if somebody gets into a central database, it makes it very easy for them to get confidential patient information," said Donald Palmisano, a New Orleans surgeon who sits on the AMA's board. "The physician-patient relationship is based on trust and, if patients think that the information may not be confidential, they may not tell us things that could be important for treating them because they fear it could be found out and used against them."
Supporters of the proposal--the subject at a meeting in Chicago of a government advisory committee--included some insurers and health care providers, who said that it could help doctors in treating patients in emergency situations and help insurers track claims.
The proposal was mandated by a 1996 federal law and the National Committee on Vital Health Statistics, whose meeting Monday was the first of several hearings on the issue. The panel is responsible for advising the Health and Human Services Department on how to carry it out.
Despite the criticisms mounting against the identification number, the committee has little choice but to come up with a proposal because of the law, said John R. Lumpkin, a member of the panel and director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Lumpkin, who is also a physician, made the case for having a system. "Say you come into an emergency room with a pain in your stomach and a scar on your abdomen and the doctor asks you what the surgery was for and you say: 'It was 15 years ago, I can't remember.' If there was an identification system, the doctor could look up the history," Lumpkin said.
However, the core issue that is emerging is where the information would be stored and who else could have access to the data, according to privacy experts. Much of the committee's discussion is centering on how the identification number could be kept confidential.
