MICRA initiative qualifies for ballot, raises privacy concerns.

The initiative will receive a ballot number in early July.

By Sergio Klor de Alva

On May 15, the trial attorney-led initiative seeking to raise the non-economic damages cap of California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) officially qualified for the upcoming November ballot. The initiative will be assigned a proposition number in early July.

 

While many healthcare professionals and health care analysts are concerned about the number of medical malpractice lawsuits and rising costs of health care as a result of the  measure, equally troubling is the mandate requiring an excessive expansion of a government-run prescription drug database. Some analysts believe this program cannot work as intended and will make personal medical information vulnerable to privacy violations.

 

This database, known as CURES, would have to be consulted before physicians and pharmacists would be allowed to prescribe or dispense Schedule II or Schedule III controlled substances to patients.

 

The initiative would require the uploading of personal prescription drug records of millions of California patients onto the database (which is accessible by hundreds of thousands of users). However, the mandate does not add additional funding for this expansion of the database and does not ensure any supplemental security standards or protections against hacking, theft, or improper access by non-authorized personnel.

 

Furthermore, experts such as Tim Gage, former California Finance Director and Principal at Blue Sky Consulting, have argued that the CURES mandate “cannot be implemented as written,” a sentiment echoed by Richard Thorp, M.D., President of the California Medical Association (CMA).

 

The CURES mandate is also being promoted at a time of mass reports of illegal hacking, and federal warnings that the health sector is especially vulnerable to hackers seeking personal medical records. Since 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has reported 991 distinct incidences of medical data breaches involving at least 500 individuals, affecting over 30 million different patients. Many states are taking measures to increase protections of online prescription drug data, but this initiative would move California in the opposite direction.

 

For more information on the ballot initiative, and the harm it would cause to consumer privacy, please visit www.cmanet.org/micra or www.stophigherhealthcarecosts.com. Image via www.stophigherhealthcarecosts.com.