An e-mail has been making the rounds among some of my physician colleagues. “I am shocked that information about the prescriptions I write for my patients is being sold to drug companies for marketing purposes,” begins the missive. “This is a violation of my privacy as a physician and an intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship!”
The note implores doctors to support laws that restrict the sale of physician-prescribing information to drug companies and to sign up with the American Medical Association to have our prescription information blocked from sale for commercial purposes.
The trigger of this e-mail was a court case, Sorrell v. IMS Health, which was argued last month in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case challenges a Vermont law prohibiting the commercial sale of doctor-prescription records without the physician’s express approval. IMS Health, the company that brought the suit on the grounds that the law violates free commercial speech, is a data miner: it buys prescription data from pharmacies, removes the patients’
