I noticed in this week’s AMNews that the AMA is running an ad encouraging physicians to enroll in the Prescription Data Restriction Program (PDRP) which sets a flag in the AMA’s Masterfile instructing licensees to not share your prescription data. The AMA itself does not collect prescription data, but other organizations get dumps from drugstores nationwide and match them to the Masterfile. The Masterfile is a 102-year-old database with demographic, education, and certification data for all US physicians. Most records begin when students enter medical school.
The PDRP came as a reaction to critical commentary of the way prescribing data is used by subscribers. The problem is with enforcement. If a physician finds out that a prescription profile has been generated without their consent, they have to complain to the AMA, who then will investigate. Theoretically if the violation is bad enough the AMA will reject the violator’s Masterfile license, but I can’t imagine the AMA cutting off a big customer completely. After all, the AMA receives 16.1% of their 2007 revenue from “database products” so they are not unbiased.
Originally you had to renew the opt-out every three years, but that was fixed last year after more complaints. Even the US Senate continues to ask why PDRP is opt-out instead of opt-in.
(A sidenote: surprisingly, a search for “ama pdrp” in Google doesn’t have the AMA’s official PDRP page in the results while Yahoo has it at #1.)
Once there, you have to give the AMA your name, DOB, and state to find your Masterfile record. You create a username/password, then hit “opt out”. If you are curious what your Masterfile primary key (ME number) is, look at the “xuser” cookie set by ama-assn.org.
The authenticators used by the AMA for this process are weak and available from most people’s Facebook profiles. However, it looks like all a malicious user could do is enroll in PDRP; unless you are an active AMA member you can’t do anything else with the login.
Tags: ama · masterfile · pdrp · prescriptionNo Comments
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