The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) can investigate injury trends and bring its data into the 21st century without a contractor collecting consumers’ personal information from emergency room visits.
WASHINGTON, DC—KFF Health News reported last week that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is pushing at least 100 hospitals to turn over patients’ personal information from emergency room visits to a private contractor by the end of the year, including names, addresses, and diagnoses. This reportedly comes as part of the agency’s broader efforts to modernize its National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), the country’s main system for tracking trends of injuries associated with different categories of consumer products.
The following is a statement from William Wallace, Director of Safety Advocacy at Consumer Reports:
“Consumer Reports has long supported the NEISS program and called for it to be strengthened because it provides a fundamental understanding of which types of products are linked to injuries. Modernizing how the CPSC collects and analyzes emergency room data is a worthwhile goal, and one we support.
“However, sweeping up the personal medical records of countless patients is simply not necessary for product safety—and it would be wildly irresponsible from a privacy perspective. For decades, hospitals have voluntarily provided deidentified injury data through NEISS, allowing the CPSC to identify trends in product-related injuries and publish nationwide injury estimates. Protecting consumers’ safety does not require assembling a database of Americans’ medical records, including for injuries that may have nothing to do with consumer products. The agency says its contractor would remove identifying details before any data reaches the CPSC. But that still leaves a private company citing federal authority to collect and hold the identifiable medical records of millions of Americans—under a contract the agency has not made public.
“The CPSC should immediately and publicly abandon any plans to sweep up patients’ personal information from emergency room visits. If the agency wants to change the NEISS program, it should first answer basic questions about what it will collect, how it will analyze the data, and how sensitive information would be protected, and put a complete proposal forward for public comment. The CPSC should also make its contract with Konza Health public. As the CPSC looks to use advanced technology in the service of product safety, it is critical for the agency to uphold basic tenets of individual privacy and government transparency.”
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Media Contact: Emily Akpan, emily.akpan@consumer.org