Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

How private is your ‘private’ medical information?

Posted on October 14, 2010October 14, 2010 by Staff

Sarah Preston

Do you know who’s peeking at your private medical information? Who do you think should be?

Obviously, all of us expect that our doctors will have access to this information as well as pharmacists and other essential health care personnel. Thanks, however, to the implementation of the state pharmaceutical database in 2007 – something that was authorized and created by the state legislature in 2005 – there are many government officials who may troll through our pharmaceutical records.

For instance, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services already has access to the database and so does the State Bureau of Investigation. The stated legislative intent for the database was to improve health care and treatment services and prevent deaths caused by overdoses, particularly overdoses of pain medication. It was argued that doctors could use the database to help identify a person with real chronic pain problems versus someone struggling with addiction. However, the pharmaceutical database goes well beyond that limited purpose. Indeed, it contains information about prescriptions filled by millions of North Carolinians to treat anything from chronic pain to breast cancer to depression.

Protecting people’s health is certainly an excellent objective; but the legislature’s concern is belied by the fact that when the legislation was passed, the SBI was given authority to troll through the database. Now to add further cause for concern, local law-enforcement agencies want access to these private medical records.

Late this summer, the N.C. Sheriffs Association announced its intention to seek legislation adding sheriffs’ offices to the list of government entities that have access to the pharmaceutical database. The abuse of legally prescribed drugs is certainly dangerous and something that the government should take an interest in preventing. However, health care should ultimately remain the responsibility of health care providers and their patients, not law-enforcement officers.

When so many physical and mental illnesses still carry a stigma, knowledge that DHHS officials, SBI agents and county medical examiners, as well as doctors and pharmacists, have access to the database could be enough to discourage some from seeking appropriate medical services. Adding sheriffs’ offices to that list will only serve to further chill North Carolinians from seeking treatments they need. If a law is broken, current law already allows sheriffs and other local law-enforcement officers access to the information in the database. All they need to do is simply obtain a court order or contact the SBI.

Most people would rather be able to control who knows about their medical treatment themselves and the Constitution is meant to provide us all with that essential privacy right. It only takes one unscrupulous government official to misuse the database, fishing for information about an individual or disclosing information he should not, to cause a problem. And the more law-enforcement agencies that have access to the database, the more likely that is to happen. Every North Carolinian is entitled to keep their medical treatment private and more than enough people already have access to this database. The General Assembly should reject the Sheriffs Association’s request to be added to the lengthy list of people that can access this private medical information.

Sarah Preston is legislative counsel for the ACLU of North Carolina.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme