California’s Attorney General has sent a letter to the Mercury News:
The California Department of Justice must safeguard the rights and interests of nearly 40 million Californians. That’s why when it comes to requiring doctors to utilize a database containing sensitive, personal prescription drug information, we won’t sign off until we know it works and doesn’t leak (Editorial, Feb. 11).
CURES puts patients’ personal information on the line. The updated system for collecting and sharing anyone’s personal data must be secure and functional before it is certified for mandatory use.
This undertaking must be done right. Launching a mandatory tool before it’s ready makes people lose confidence in the system.
No one wants a repeat of the Equifax data breach, where millions of Californians’ private information was compromised. Nor do we want to relive the botched roll-out of the healthcare.gov website.
It’s critical we certify CURES’ capacity without delay. We’ll crack down on doctors who overprescribe without compromising Californians’ personal data.
Xavier Becerra
California Attorney General
Most states now have these types of databases that were nominally or originally intended to help catch patients who were doctor-shopping to get prescription pain medications and to catch doctors who might be running pill mills. But the reality is that for most patients, we are put at risk of privacy and data security breaches for no reason other than there are some criminals out there and we’re going to be treated as criminals just in case? California’s AG is correct to be concerned, although I don’t know enough of the history of California’s database to know why the data security hasn’t been assessed and addressed already….?