Virginia Assembly Delegate, Mark D. Sickles (Dem., Springfield), a proponent of bringing investment in Bio Tech and Biosciences to Virginia, recently filed House Bill Number 2452 which, if passed, will ban the resale of prescription data for commercial purposes.
The main points of the Bill are:
No health insurer, self-insured employer, electronic transmission intermediary, pharmacy or other similar entity, shall license, transfer, use, or sell records that include prescription information containing patient-identifiable or prescriber-identifiable data for any commercial purpose.
The provisions of this section shall not apply to:
The license, transfer, use, or sale of prescription records for the limited purposes of pharmacy reimbursement, prescription drug formulary compliance, patient care management, utilization review by a healthcare provider or insurance provider, healthcare research, or as otherwise provided by law;
The dispensing of prescription medications to a patient or the patient's authorized representative;
The transition of prescription information between an authorized prescriber and a licensed pharmacy, between licensed pharmacies, or that may occur if a pharmacy's ownership is changed or transferred;
Communications provided to a patient about the patient's health condition, adherence to a prescribed course of therapy, and other information related to the drug being dispensed, treatment options, or clinical trials;
The use or disclosure of prescription information as otherwise authorized by this title; and
The collection, use, transfer, or sale of patient and prescriber data for commercial purposes if the data does not identify a person, and there is no reasonable basis to believe that the data provided could be used to identify a person.
These bans on prescription data are a violation of freedom of commercial speech, though the Courts are split on this issue, the majority of decisions have come down with data mining restrictions.
It will be difficult for Virginia which is doing its best to attract biotech businesses to pass such a law, given the shortness of the legislative session being over less than 60 days from now, means that much will happen in a short time.