Legal Precedence

A court case in New York State reviewed the collection and listing by the state of all patients receiving narcotics through a triplicate state mandated prescription system.   The question of whether a data warehouse of computerized patient records actively collected by New York State violated a patient's individual rights to privacy was the subject of a challenge by a group of physicians in 1977.

The state justified the intrusion by offering law enforcement and public health as the justification for the statute.   The patient-focused concerns were the risk that medications prescribed might be revealed and possible avoidance of appropriate medical care by the patient because they feared exposure for taking restricted drugs.   In this instance, the outcome could easily be less than satisfactory.⁴

In Whalen vs. Roe, The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the New York ruling that collection of personal narcotic prescription data in an electronic database was unconstitutional.   The Supreme Court found the privacy of the patient-physician relationship did not fall within constitutional parameters for privacy.   The court added that accumulation of tremendous amounts of personal information in computer data registries indeed threatened the prospect of personal privacy.   The court also noted that adequate precautions and protocols preventing disclosure are necessary to protect the public.   However, the court found in favor of the state's right to collect personally identifiable health information.⁵

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