Taking away our freedom:
Health Records and SHIN

 
Nipawin - December 21, 2000 - By: Mario deSantis
   

hidden
agenda

It was yesterday that Timothy Shire sent me an e-mail and drew my attention to the fact that
the SHIN's flop is really irrelevant when you consider our governments' hidden agenda of
establishing personal health records for every citizen. Our governments don't care about
throwing money into the garbage, what they care is to finally control the lives of all the
citizens by the implementation of computerized health records. This is why our own
provincial government along with SHIN are entering into contractual arrangements with the
Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), HL7 Canada and the Western Health
Information Collaborative (WHIC) agency(1).

 

 

 

 

Bruce
Phillips

Bruce Phillips, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, has explicitly expressed his privacy
concerns about establishing unique national identifiers for patients, facilities and service
providers; and introducing national standards for reporting prescription drug use(2). Health
care in Canada is supposed to be a public service, and now we are going to have our own
governments going into the private business of selling our own health records.

 

 

privacy

It is disconcerting to realize the deceptive interest of our governments to govern our lives and
implement the consolidation of computerized health records, while at the same time hailing the
efficiencies provided by the related computerized health network. Health care is dysfunctional
across Canada, the implementation of new health information technologies have been a disaster
across Canada, and now we are going to have our own freedom taken away by the governmental
selling of our own health records. And the fear that our governments are going to infringe on
our own freedom is not a joke, as this same privacy concern has been raised in the United
States and new regulations have been passed to protect the privacy of US citizens(3).
   
-----------References/endnotes:
   
  List of relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign
   

1.
-

The SHIN Saga of Health Reform: Common Problem, No Problem? By Mario deSantis, December 18, 2000

 

 

2.

ANNUAL REPORT 1999-2000, Privacy Commissioner

 

 

3.
-

New Medical Privacy Rules, by Laura Meckler, Washington, December 19, 2000, The Associated Press