Incontinence pads-maker using patient information without permission - Update

Thursday 09 August 2012

Health minister Edith Schippers said on Thursday that dispensing chemists should not be passing confidential patient information to commercial companies and must keep within the privacy laws.

She was reacting to news that dispensing chemists are giving patients' medical information to the commercial company Tena, makers of incontinence pads, without asking permission.

Schippers says medical information can only be made available with the express permission of the patient. She will be looking into exactly what is going on and take 'suitable' action, she said.

New rules

There are 650,000 people in the Netherlands with incontinence and new rules from health insurer Achmea and its subsidiaries Agis and Zilveren Kruis say dispensing chemists must divide patients who need pads into categories, from light to heavy.

Achmea changed the rules on July 1 from an unlimited supply of pads to a daily tariff for the number of pads sold. Light pads are costed at a lower rate than heavy pads.

It is up to the dispensing chemists to work out who need which type of pad and a 'user profile' is the easiest way to do this. However, because they make very little money on incontinence pads, outsourcing the calls necessary to determine which category a patient falls into saves them a lot of time, reports the Volkskrant.

Questions

Tena gets the patient information from the dispensing chemists and then calls each patient with a list of questions. The answers are used for the 'user profile'.

The Tena website does contain an example of a letter that can be sent if a patient does not want to be called. However, a source at the company said most patients know nothing about the situation when they pick up the telephone, the paper says.

Achmea is quite happy to use Tena to collect the information. An internal memo says 'Tena nursing staff are not allowed to recommend their own product,' says the Volkskrant.

Herman Klein Tiessink of the patient association told the paper this is 'a bizarre situation'. 'Obviously it is not an independent judgement. Furthermore, incontinence is a private and sensitive subject. You do not want to be interrogated by a commercial company,' he said.

Health insurers VGZ and CZ will begin collecting information for 'user profiles' later this year.

© DutchNews.nl