This week CBC Marketplace -- the CBC's consumer watchdog show -- aired a story about how Canadian hospitals allow private companies into maternity wards, capture newborn patient data, then sell that information to other companies like Pampers, Procter & Gamble and Allianz Funds.

This is a privacy violation of the first order.

What's even worse is that it's negative-option marketing that requires expectant mothers to explicitly opt-out.

In exchange the hospitals get a few thousand dollars and sometimes some medical equipment.

It turns out that Karen’s hospital allows a photo company called Growing Family into the maternity ward.

They take more than photographs - they take personal data: children's birth dates, names, and home phone numbers. Then Growing Family sells that information to other companies that want to pitch products to new parents.

...

In return for the access, Growing Family pays hospitals several thousand dollars a year. Sometimes they even give them fancy new medical equipment. It's a story that's happening in 185 hospitals.

Women’s College, the Toronto hospital where Karen had her baby, refused to answer our questions about their deal with Growing Family.


People put their trust in hospitals and expect their patient records to remain private. To a hospital administrator the attraction of a little bit more money and medical equipment might seem like a reasonable bargain for a few patient names and phone numbers. It's not.

Privacy is automatically assumed, expected and deserved by patients. It is critical to the delivery of good healthcare.

If hospitals teach patients the lesson that they will sell private information to third parties and commercial entities as early as the day they are born, patients will be less likely to be forthcoming about their medical problems. What other kinds of information would hospitals be willing to sell and to whom? Who knows where that information from their patient files will turn up?

Imagine if a bank sent some third party your private financial information without your explicit, informed consent and knowledge.  You would probably (and rightly) be outraged.

Hospitals,  like banks, have one commodity that is priceless: Trust. This data harvesting scheme is a betrayal of that trust and no business can afford to lose the confidence of its clientele.

CBC Marketplace: Mining Your Business
(http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/services/privacy/index.html)

Watch the show (RealVideo)
Mamma data: Targeting new parents
(http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/services/privacy/mammadata20041024.ram)