By Citizens' Council for Health Freedom
St. Paul, MN - February 26, 2019 - (The Stuff Gazette) -- Last summer, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) released a groundbreaking book that could change the way both patients and doctors think about the exam room experience.
Written by CCHF president and co-founder Twila Brase, RN, PHN, “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records” exposes how the mandated, government-certified electronic health record (EHR) technology (CEHRT) has negatively affected doctors and patients. A recent study pegged the EHR as a primary reason for physician burnout.
Now, libraries around the country are beginning to offer Brase’s book to their communities so they can learn more about protecting their private medical information, guarding their patient-doctor relationship, how HIPAA is deceptive and more.
Brase’s extensively researched work shows how and why Congress forced doctors and hospitals to install a data-collecting, command-and-control surveillance system in each exam room. It also includes the impact of EHRs on privacy, patient care, costs, patient safety and more, according to doctors and over 125 studies.
“In 2009, Congress mandated the use of government-certified EHRs, which means the EHR is built not to improve patient care but to do what the government wants it to do: government reporting, patient and doctor profiling, data analytics, health services research, linking to a national medical-records system, population health, standardized treatment protocols, compliance tracking and much more,” Brase said. “As a result, surveillance technology is now present in virtually every doctor’s office and every hospital room.
“Patients face this intrusive system because they don’t pay their own medical bills,” she continued. “Third parties—the government, employers and health plans—pay for most medical care. As Americans handed over their responsibility for medical bills to third parties they gradually lost choices, privacy, control and freedom. The payers, not the patients, hold the purse strings and the power. These third parties do not have the same interest in the patient’s health, recovery and quality of life as the patient does. We hope ‘Big Brother in the Exam Room’ will be an eye-opener for people as they learn more about the negativity behind the scenes of health care. And we hope people will check out ‘Big Brother’ from a local library soon, or ask their local library to carry the book if it doesn’t.”
Libraries around the country are already carrying “Big Brother in the Exam Room,” including the Library of Congress, the Minnesota Legislative Library, and several other libraries in Minnesota, where CCHF is headquartered. Find libraries that offer the book here.
One reader offered this positive review on GoodReads.com: “I remember when a friend expressed concern that I did a 23andme test. She felt I would be giving the government access to my personal health information. I told her that it was most likely too late, because the government already had easy access to my health information. After reading “Big Brother in the Exam Room”by Twila Brase, my fears are confirmed.” Continue review.
Those who have purchased “Big Brother in the Exam Room” online also have words of high praise for the book that has nearly five stars on Amazon.
One Amazon purchaser, Dr. Paulette Metoyer, gave “Big Brother in the Exam Room” five stars:
“Highly informative book on the origins and meaning of HIPPA and its connection to EHRs,” Dr. Metoyer wrote. “As a physician myself I really learned a lot of stuff that I did not know. I have advised all of my friends who are doctors and nurses to read this book.”
Another reviewer remarked:
“This book is outstanding! Twila has done a fantastic job of showing how the growth of data collection can affect the freedom of all Americans. I appreciated how she outlined the steps back to freedom. This is a must read for all Americans who are impacted more than we know by the health care system today.”
Robert W. Geist, MD, also called “Big Brother in the Exam Room” the “most erudite and easily readable book on what’s happened to medicine after government.”
“Decades of rationing care to control cost inflation have not worked yet we are saddled with massive crony (government backed) corporate cartels empowered to ration care with mandated electronic ‘efficiency’ and Big Data mining,” Dr. Geist wrote. “Medicine has been decimated and cost inflation continues thanks to political malpractice. Twila Brase’s book details how the government incrementally came to ration care. Policy makers could have instead of repealed the political cause of inflated demand: tax-subsidized insurance for ‘free care.’ Too bad that a free lunch comes at such a high price in cost inflation and in rationing patient access to care.”
“Big Brother in the Exam Room,” already in its second printing by Beaver’s Pond Press, has been ranked at least three times as the No. 1 Amazon best-sellerin its category.
