Flawed health IT engineering puts our health data at risk, and other letters

Regarding the recent article “80% of health IT leaders say their systems have been compromised” (ModernHealthcare.com, Aug. 26), the current U.S. health information technology system is engineered to guarantee that health data breaches will occur forever.

Our systems enable millions of “weak links” (people and automated technology services) to access millions of patients' records every day. There are no limits on data collection or who can access the entire nation's most sensitive personal health information. Data security is weak, and there's a huge hidden data broker industry, with no accountability or transparency to governments or individuals (whose personal health information is now held in millions of databases, unknown and inaccessible to the patients).

Millions of employees of covered entities, business associates and subcontractors access, use, disclose, trade and sell the nation's personal health information to some 100,000 health-data suppliers covering three-quarters of a million daily health-data feeds. Without a “culture” of protecting data security, data holders are not required to use gold-standard data security technology or obtain external audits proving they meet tough data-security standards. There also isn't a data map that tracks all flows of our health data, so without control over personal health information, we need a “chain of custody.”

Dr. Deborah Peel

Regarding the article “Flawed VA data include 300,000 'pending' enrollment records for dead vets” (ModernHealthcare.com, Sept. 2), the Veterans Health Administration has become a glaring symbol of the U.S. government's incompetence and the status quo. Here's a large agency eschewing accountability while demanding more resources to “fix” problems that never should have happened. I have friends who work there and went there as a personal mission. Their morale is low because the VA is so big, so entrenched in valueless bureaucracy, so self-centric as to openly ignore its mission while institutionalizing inefficiency, waste and indifference.

The VA system needs to be dismantled and replaced with vouchers. It's a national disgrace when it should be an organization demonstrating superlative care for our veterans.

Michael Cadger

I initially took Modern Healthcare Editor Merrill Goozer for a big-government leftie. And I think of myself as a small-government proponent. And then something happened as I read more of his writing. It is smart, well-reasoned and very persuasive. I no longer choose to put him somewhere on the political spectrum. His weekly columns have become essential reading for me. On a busy day, I often race through the pages of the magazine, but now I always tear out the column for later reading.

Ed Michael Reggie