BREAKING: State Police Reportedly Collecting Pharmacy Records Across Vermont
by: odum
Mon Dec 03, 2007 at 11:56:36 AM EST
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The Department of Health is in the process of seeking legislative approval of administrative rules the Department drafted to govern VPMS. The proposed rules will monitor your physician's provision, and your access to, hundreds of treatments for thousands of conditions. The purpose of the law is intended to identify substance abusers and to facilitate their treatment -- nothing inherently wrong with that and in fact it is a laudable goal. However, the proposed regulations by the Department of Health do not accomplish the goal set out by the legislature, violate the laws governing the VPMS and present too many dangers for disclosure, misuse, mishandling of sensitive patient medical information.
As CL stated, the law mandates collecting the minimum necessary information to achieve it's stated goals.
But
instead of the Department of Health, we apparently needed to be watching out for the State Police. GMD has learned that State Police representatives are going to Vermont Pharmacies and demanding complete dumps of all information about patients with Schedule II prescriptions (the class of medications that include prescription drugs with street value). After talking to a few pharmacists, I found one in Franklin County that confirmed they had been approached, and had been advised by the state that they did, indeed need to comply with the request. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy about it.
What's even more disturbing? When I asked if he knew of any other pharmacies that were being mined for data in this way, he responded that it was his understanding that
this was a process that was to take place across the state.more at:
http://greenmountaindaily.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1931UPDATE: In State of Vermont v. Judy Welch, the Vermont Supreme Court - unbelievably - has upheld the power of law enforcement to seize pharmacy records without a warrant as far back as 1992, stating "there is no patient's privilege available for pharmaceutical records." Here's a link (MAJOR hat tip to CL for all the help, here)
http://greenmountaindaily.com/upload/VermontvWelch.pdf 
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