Health concerns

State council debates best way to collect insurance claim data

BOSTON. With highly publicized data breaches of personal information and concerns about privacy rights on the rise, members of a new state council debated yesterday how to responsibly collect and report on health insurance claim data.

The Health Care Quality and Cost Council, which was established under the universal health care law passed in April 2006, is tasked with launching a Web site that Massachusetts citizens can use to compare costs by hospital or doctor and by specific surgical procedures or diagnostic tests. The idea is that, by tracking this data, the site will ensure patients are getting the lowest cost and highest quality care possible.

In order to publish this information state officials must collect data from individual patient medical claim records.

Council members — including Massachusetts Inspector General Gregory Sullivan and Kenneth LaBresh, senior vice president and chief medical officer at MassPRO — said during the meeting they were concerned about how the information is used and protected.

JudyAnn Bigby, state secretary of health and human services and chair of the council, said the council has a “desire to ensure that people’s privacy is not breached in the process of collecting this data.”

Bigby said the council plans on meeting with lawmakers to craft an amendment to the health care law that would give the council the authority to protect private information from public release.

“This data will be a public record unless we have a regulation in place to withhold the data,” said Bigby.

Another issue facing the council is whether Massachusetts residents will use the site once it is up and running after working through the legal privacy protection loops.

The council plans to launch the Web site, which is designed to help patients decide how to choose doctors or hospitals, by March 1, 2008. Massachusetts patients rely most on their doctors for that information, rather than research on the Internet, according to a survey released today by Solomon McCown & Company Inc. during the council meeting yesterday.

The survey is based on a poll of 500 Massachusetts residents, conducted in early October.

According to the survey, 81 percent of those polled said that doctor recommendations are very important to making health care decisions.

If residents found on a trusted Web site that a hospital was rated higher than a hospital recommended by a doctor, 61 percent of those polled would go back to the doctor for advice, rather than making a change based on the site.