Don’t let greedy business use Kansas cyberattack to sell a bad medical records bill | Opinion
With the serious recent cyberattack plaguing the Kansas courts’ electronic systems, temporarily making clerk offices inaccessible for electronic filings, protecting online users’ privacy has understandably come to the top of the state’s mind. Under the guise of supposedly safeguarding Kansans’ data, bad actors have been trying to pass crony bills that would advance their business interests over the state’s health welfare.
One such bill is S.B. 234, legislation that would seemingly allow one health care technology company to sell more of its product through the force of government muscle.
The legislation appears to be written so that health care workers could use few other pieces of software besides one company’s technology to manage Kansans’ medical referrals.
Predictably, the one company in question testified before the Legislature that passing the bill is necessary to “provide guardrails for how sensitive information is obtained and shared.” But every health care worker familiar with HIPAA, the federal law restricting the release of medical information, understands that guardrails already exist.
Patients must already consent to their providers sharing their information with other professionals, and those professionals must adhere to strict regulations to protect that data. One thing that the law doesn’t specify, though, is that county governments, health facilities and social care organizations must utilize one company’s technology to do so. Fixing this so-called problem appears to be why S.B. 234 came to be.
The Kansas health care community has been clear: Passage of this bill would hurt Kansas patients.
The Saline County Health Department wrote to the Legislature that “S.B. 234, if passed, would have serious negative consequences on providing and coordinating social care services to our populations.” It also made it clear that privacy laws protecting health information, like HIPAA, already exist, so this bill is far from necessary. The Sedgwick County Health Department echoed Saline County’s concerns. It wrote that “we are not sure what this bill is trying to solve,” since this data is already protected and all the bill would do is “put up roadblocks” to coordinated care solutions.
Other health organizations that have expressed opposition to this purported giveaway include Kansas Action for Children, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization, that said S.B. 234 would “impact the ability of Kansans to be referred to and access critical services like child care,” and the Kansas Association of School Boards, which expressed concern that the bill “could prohibit school personnel from providing information about a student who is in crisis.”
Why would lawmakers ever consider moving a bill that the near entirety of the Kansas public health community opposes?
According to a monthslong Kansas City Star investigation, “Kansas runs one of the most secretive state governments in the nation, and its secrecy permeates nearly every aspect of service.” One would hope that the Legislature would behave better when dealing with matters of public health. I suppose time will tell.
Catherine Hudgins is a registered nurse in the Kansas City area.
