Can the Attorney General of the California DOJ perform the standard practice for Medical Board investigators to get years of prescription medical records from CURES to identify individual patients every time the Medical Board receives any type of complaint against a physician, even if that complaint does not concern prescribing practices?
It looks like the AMA doesn’t think so, among others, and believes there are privacy issue here.
Prescription Medical Records Privacy
The State of California’s PDMP, the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (CURES), is administered by the Office of the Attorney General in the California DOJ.
Accord to HealthDay News the Medical Board demanded a number of years of prescribing history of one physician’s patient’s records. So this violated a patients’ right of privacy. The data were obtained through the California Department of Justice database. The court of appeals stated that patient privacy (HIPPA?) was not violated and this was a perfectly legal practice.
I would guess this will make its way thru the courts as the AMA gears up for the fight.