Morning Headlines 12/17/14

Sony Pictures Data Breach

Sony writes a letter to its employees to inform them that their names, social security numbers, addresses, and personal health information may have been compromised when hackers breached the company’s security system and stole internal files.

Sharing is caring? Not for medical records

The post-mortem analysis of a failed EHR interoperability project in Oregon finds that interoperability simply isn’t good business when revenue is tied to a fee-for-service reimbursement model. OHSU’s chief health informatics officer explains, “There’s no financial incentive for the providers. In fact, in many cases, the financial incentive is reversed. Better I don’t know that the patient had an MRI a month ago and repeat it because in a fee-for-service world we get paid for the procedures we do, not the ones we avoid.”

Do patients mind if their healthcare data is shared? It depends

According to a new ethics study, patients view having their health data used to support medical research, but without their consent, as morally superior to having their health data used to support marketing efforts, even if their consent was given.

Making the Cut: Which surgeon you get matters – a lot. But how do we know who the good ones are?

Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering have developed a software system that quantifies and compares patient outcomes across all of its surgeon, with the goal of providing detailed feedback to each surgeon about their performance.