Confidential medical information was given to lawyers in Volusia County. The ACLU wants to know why. (Photo Shaine Hatch.)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Health and law enforcement officials are in hot water after prescription information for about 3,300 Floridians was released to prosecutors and defense attorneys.
According to the Associated Press, “personal details, including dosage amounts, birthdates, addresses and other information was given to Volusia County prosecutors and defense attorneys who were working on six criminal cases.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida has submitted public records requests to figure out how confidential medical information obtained from Florida’s prescription drug-monitoring program was handed over to attorneys without consent from the people whose information was released.
The ACLU also told news outlets that someone who was not part of a criminal investigation found out that their prescription information was given to the attorneys involved. The Daytona News-Journal reports that the civil rights group has been concerned that breaches of privacy are “inevitable” with databases such as Florida’s:
“We want to know how this monumental breach of security and confidentiality occurred, and how a state-mandated database could apparently be so misused that it led to the widespread distribution of intimate medical information unconnected to any ongoing investigation,” said Maria Kayanan, associate legal director for the organization.
“… The maintenance of this database is bad enough, but without effective safeguards in place to protect our right to privacy under the Florida Constitution and federal law, breaches like this are inevitable. We want to determine how those safeguards in Florida failed, or if indeed they exist at all.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, one person whose information was released has already filed a lawsuit and “is trying to keep the 3,300 records private”:
The man who filed the initial suit asked Gov. Rick Scott to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Volusia’s state attorney and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, the News-Journal reported.
“This is an active case before the Court. The Court will determine if the investigation was handled appropriately,” Scott spokesman John Tupp wrote in an email response to the paper.
The state chose to create the prescription database in 2009 as part of an effort to crack down on Florida’s pill mills. Florida was at the epicenter of a pain-killer abuse epidemic in the country that was spinning out of control.
Many doctors in the state were over-prescribing prescription pain killers to people who were abusing the drugs or selling them to others. The state database was intended to help law enforcement track the doctors writing the prescriptions and those receiving the prescription drugs.
However, there has been an ongoing debate over whether the databases help enough to outweigh the privacy concerns, which have now come to fruition.
In fact, Gov. Rick Scott was originally opposed to the drug database due to privacy concerns.
The AP also reports that Scott at one point even “tried to kill [the database] with help from House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park”:
The Republican governor relented in the face of opposition from Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Senate President Mike Haridopolos and other senators who refused to repeal the law that created the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
Scott had questioned the system’s effectiveness and said he was worried it might invade patients’ privacy, but has since changed his tune and recently signed a bill awarding the database $500,000 in the coming fiscal year.
The database faced a number of political battles before it was up an running in 2011. In the past two years, law enforcement officials have been trying to get more members of the medical community to use the database.