US Hospitals spy on patient purchases to spot bad habits.

Are you using today your Wall Mart card?

US Hospitals spy on patient purchases to spot bad habits. (RT).

According to a Bloomberg News report, hospitals in various states are beginning to use consumer information mined through data brokers in order to fill out more complete profiles of their patients. 

By tabulating these statistics and projecting which individuals are at risk of falling ill the most, medical professionals are hoping to correct potential problems before they get worse.

The process is already underway in at least two major hospital chains, one in Pennsylvania and the other across both North and South Carolina.

At the Carolinas Healthcare System – comprised of more than 900 hospitals, nursing homes, surgical centers, and more – officials are employing information such as where a person shops, the kind of food they buy, and whether or not they smoke to craft profiles for roughly 2 million people.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and its 20-plus facilities, meanwhile, is also using household information to learn more about more than 2 million patients.

“What we are looking to find are people before they end up in trouble,” said Carolinas’ director of research Michael Dulin to Bloomberg. “The idea is to use big data and predictive models to think about population health and drill down to the individual levels to find someone running into trouble that we can reach out to and try to help out.”

Large data brokers like LexisNexis and Acxiom are already known to be collecting numerous pieces of information regarding American customers alongside their spending and lifestyle habits. As RT reported previously, a Senate survey found data brokers are gathering up to 75,000 data points on each individual consumer they track within the United States. 

This information can be simple – like your favorite sports team – but it can also include much more than that, and it can be sold for profit to other companies.

As noted by Bloomberg, the US government is also fining hospitals that readmit too many patients per month and “rewarding hospitals that do well on a benchmark of clinical outcomes and patient surveys.” As a result, it’s more beneficial now than it was before for hospitals to ensure their patients don’t end up in the emergency room.

Although hospitals can reveal an individual’s risk assessment to a doctor, they are not permitted to reveal particular details about it. Still, the fact that these institutions are gathering large amounts of data on individuals has many concerned over their privacy.

“It is one thing to have a number I can call if I have a problem or question, it is another thing to get unsolicited phone calls. I don’t like that,” Jorjanne Murry, a North Carolina resident who has Type 1 diabetes, told Bloomberg. “I think it is intrusive.”

As a safeguard against some of these concerns, Dulin said that at Carolinas Healthcare System, there will be an option for patients to opt-out of the process and ensure their info remains private. He argued that this information is currently being sold to people much less interested in a person’s well being than hospitals, presumably a reference to marketers and other commercial companies,.


“The data is already used to market to people to get them to do things that might not always be in the best interest of the consumer," he said. “We are looking to apply this for something good.”Hmmm....One more reason why i don't use plastic.....that includes loyalty programs :)

Iran preparing for more hardship, plans to issue electronic coupons for emergency first foods.

Iran preparing for more hardship, plans to issue electronic coupons for emergency first foods.(TI).Iran might be implementing the electronic discount cards for emergency first products,Member of Iranian parliament's economic commission Arslanan Fathipour said, Iran's "Dunyaye Eqtesad" newspaper reported. Fathipour said that given the today's economic situation in the country, and the imposed international sanctions, the coupons must be brought back in the shape of electronic coupons. This would be the second time Iran is using such strategy to support its economy. 
After the Islamic Revolution in 1981 the country was experiencing great deficit of some foods and services. They were either in deficit or too expensive. At that time the it was ordered to implement the special discount coupons for 10 emergency first products and services, to reduce the overall prices. After the economy stablized, Iran canceled the discount coupons.
Today, Iran is facing extreme international pressure because of its nuclear program, and the imposed sanctions damage the economy of the country, which heavily depends on oil exports. Iran has recently started to implement the "economy of resistance" to tackle the impact of economic crisis. Special group has been established from the members of Iran's Iranian parliament, presidential administration and the juridical system - a total of 9 people. Arsalan Fathipour said the economic commission created a 9-article plan, which will be forwarded to the parliament for approval next week. If approved, Iran will start implementing the electronic discount cards soon.
The first stage of the subsidy reform plan, which is mainly focused on cutting fuel subsidies, started in December 2010. The government has described the subsidy plan as the "biggest surgery" to the nation's economy in half a century and "one of the most important undertakings in Iran's recent economic history". The goal of the subsidy reform plan is to replace subsidies on food and energy (80% of total) with targeted social assistance, in accordance with Five Year Economic Development Plan and move towards free market prices in a 5-year period. The subsidy reform plan is the most important part of a broader Iranian economic reform plan. Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Shamseddin Hosseini said in May that the second phase of the Targeted Subsidy Reform Plan would be implemented in due course and that the Government had not decided on any specific time thus far.Hmmm.....U.S.: Food coupons - Iran: electronic discount cards?Read the full story here.