NYC shares lab results without consent
Privacy experts shudder at program meant to prevent diabetes
Posted: February 1, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jon Dougherty
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A mandatory program adopted by the New York City Board of Health last month to monitor blood sugar records in the name of diabetes prevention is being carried out without patients' knowledge and informed consent, according to city officials.

In addition, patients are not free to opt out of the program, although, officials said, NYC residents can ultimately decline to be notified if their blood glucose levels are found to be elevated – but doctors will still be contacted.

The program has been praised by health-care officials in New York but severely criticized by medical privacy experts and analysts as overly intrusive and constitutionally questionable. Some fear the program will spread to other cities.

At issue is a regulation the NYC health board passed in December requiring laboratories to electronically transmit to the Department of Health the results of every patient who comes in for a hemoglobin A1c test – a lab evaluation that measures three-month blood sugar level averages and is used by physicians to determine whether patients are keeping glucose levels under control. The city's A1c mandate is the first-ever required government tracking of a chronic, non-communicable disease in the United States, officials said.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48596

We're from your government and we're here to help you. Sheeesh

Where do these people get off?

This is an invasion of privacy and should be against the federal law on medical records.

We need to close health departments. To be they are in the same class as "telephone sanitisers" in a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

The medical profession is taking over everything - they need to be stopped.

Whatever happened to confidentiality?

This will have to be challeneged in court. I hope.

This country, and NYC in particular, is reminding me more and more of East Germany and other Iron Curtain countries. They had cameras on every street to watch the citizens (we're seeing more and more of that here), and children were encouraged to snitch on their parents (as we see with children being indoctrinated by the antis). A friend told us about a relative who lived in East Germany; the police would come into their homes to see who had visited (all visitors had to register)and to count lightbulbs because people were restricted to a certain number. If they had too many lightbulbs, the police removed the offending bulbs.

Are we now really so far away from what they went through?

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diabetes

I am not happy with this either I am a diabetic I keep my blood sugars under control. at my last visit to the doctor I had my blood drawn. the Doc was amazed at my AC1 results.. everything was at or below the standards colestral good and bad blood sugar at 101 aveage over three months.. I will be ask him about my concerns of making and keeping my med records private...