Is there existing legal protection for patient safety information exchanged across institutional boundaries?
Perhaps the most promising source of existing Federal protection for safety information exchanged across institutional boundaries lies in 42 U.S.C. §299c-3(c), which specifies that information collected in the course of activities sponsored or supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) may not be used for any purpose other than the purpose for which it was supplied. Although the data collected by AHRQ-sponsored entities are clearly protected under 42 U.S.C. §299c-3(c), it is uncertain whether that protection extends to data collected in the course of AHRQ-sponsored activities, but which are later disseminated to other organizations, i.e., other members of a regional health care safety consortium for non-AHRQ-sponsored safety activities. Susan Green Merewitz, senior attorney for AHRQ, relying on Farnsworth v. Proctor & Gamble, has argued that due to the public policy favoring protection of data collected for safety purposes, If individuals inside a health care in
