This is just a question of curiosity. How and where does the FAA go to see your medical records if they want to? Case in point, I have two different doctors that work for two different hospital organizations managing a health issue I have. Both are neurologists with their own specialties and work well with each other but lots of times when I go for blood work or tests for one doctor the other doesn't see the results since they are within two different networks. If two doctors of the same patient can't see each others stuff then how does the FAA even know where to go look? To be clear, I am not trying to hide anything or even asking for any specific reason. I am certainly not asking to try to find loop holes or suggesting that people be dishonest on their medical. This is just more of a general curiosity question since I see lots of posts on here from people asking about old diagnoses or medications they had taken decades ago. How would the FAA even find about those if you were in an accident. How would they even know what health insurance network or what provider to go ask from years ago?
Where does the FAA find your medical info from?
- Thread starter kmacht
- Start date
Simple, they ask you. If you fail to provide, they will revoke your medical for failure to respond.
If they suspect you are not being forthright, they can ask the Dr or insurance company directly, who may or may not provide them.
And of course, if they think you are being evasive, and they want them bad enough, they can make a referral and get a subpoena.
They really only need to know that they might exist and you are not providing them to make your cert go away.
You are guilty and must prove your innocence in the FAA world.
If they suspect you are not being forthright, they can ask the Dr or insurance company directly, who may or may not provide them.
And of course, if they think you are being evasive, and they want them bad enough, they can make a referral and get a subpoena.
They really only need to know that they might exist and you are not providing them to make your cert go away.
You are guilty and must prove your innocence in the FAA world.
Where did you learn that sentence structure AT?
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There is no button the FAA can press to get your past diagnoses and medical records. Every couple of years they go on a fishing expedition and crossmatch a government database with the medicals. This happened with the SSI-Disability DB 10+ years ago and with the VA disability DB more recently. Creates great excitement here anytime it happens.
Country Flier
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CFL
For prescriptions: look up what the PMP database is...goes back many, many years.
For scheduled drugs that is true. For other drugs, not so. However, through your medical records search consent the FAA can access insurance records which would record all drug prescriptions paid for, in whole or in part, by your insurance plan. Non-scheduled drugs not paid for by insurance would be a bit tougher for the FAA to access unless they had cause to do a deep dive and access the records of the pharmacies used for your insurance prescriptions. If a non-scheduled drug Rx was filled by a non chain pharmacy and you self paid it would be unlikely to be discovered unless they wanted to devote a lot of time and cast a bunch of lines trying to catch anything. They would have to have one heck of a reason to go that far.
Jeff Oslick
Final Approach
So, this gets interesting when we're dealing with a prescription given to a minor. The insurance is their parent's, not their own. Are you really explicitly signing access to your parent's insurance company's database when you sign the form? This seems like it could be challenged in court by the parents.
Why? Is a preposition a bad thing to end a sentence with?Where did you learn that sentence structure AT?
That wasn't the FAA's fishing expedition. That was a guy looking for VA disability fraud by finding people allegedly who were disabled that were working as pilots. Of course, the FAA has never felt it was necessary to comply with federal law with regards to things like the Privacy Act. They continue to violate it every day.
'Operation safe pilot' in 2003 was done by the FAA, not SSA.
In the current sweep, the veterans/pilots are receiving the letter of investigation from the FAA, not the VA inspector general.
These are definitely FAA investigations.
As to the privacy act thing. Since they got slapped down on the records check, they have crossed their I's and dotted their T's by including language in the medical application that forces you to consent to such a search. That was a technicality Stan managed to exploit back in 2002 but the buerocrats have fixed that since.
Again, those are government databases the FAA has access to (+ controlled substance scripts). And even those checks were done in a rather pedestrian post hoc way using spreadsheets and floppy discs. There is no button someone can push at the FAA to pull the note on that visit to a clinical psychologist in 1996 after your favorite aunt died. If you report it, they know about it. If you don't, they don't.
They're still violating the privacy act in divulging pilot information to the public without allowing the pilots to opt out.
Don’t do it, it’s a felony.
DesertNomad
Pattern Altitude
Just report it. I reported a visit to a doctor in Iran about 10 years ago (when it was within the 3-year window). There is honestly no way the FAA would ever know that I went to the ER there (food poisoning), but I reported it. Obviously I paid cash as US insurance does not work in Iran (nor do US credit cards for that matter). My AME simply asked what I was doing in Iran (tourist) and that it sounded interesting.
kell490
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The day will be here soon enough when medical records are all easy to get. I'm surprised the FAA doesn't require the AME to pull electronic medical records, and current prescription drugs. I know when I see a doctor now days they pull all my scripts from local drug stores even ones I don't even take anymore. They ask me if I'm still taking those some I might only use once or twice still refills. Another thing I noticed was my primary care doctor he seemed to have records on my family history the conditions my father had who passed in the 1990's. I never told them they got the records somehow.
K
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Thank you much for providing my dad and me with a great laugh!Where did you learn that sentence structure AT?
Lawson_Stone
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That is something up with which I will not put!
Tools
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Tools
Furthermore, so what if the military gives you something, and maybe uses a not so standard standard to justify it?
The faa explicitly uses non standard standards to crucify individuals. The military is at least trying to help THOSE WHO SERVED.
They need to stay in their own lane. Determine for themselves if someone is fit to fly or not. It’s the usual one way street with them. We trust the military to diagnose you with something you shouldn’t fly with… but don’t trust them to clear you to fly. And they do it all from home looking at a computer screen… wow. Just wow.
I’ve never met a vet I wouldn’t trust to fly. I’m sure there are some…
Can’t even count the number of idiots with A LOT more money than brains the faa doesn’t give me one tool to ground. And that’s ok… it just REALLY irks me to see them go after vets.
ateamer
Pattern Altitude
It’s not, except in the view of socially-challenged wannabe grammarians. Just because teachers from our youth (teachers who were anything but SMEs, and who taught by rote from the same syllabus they’d used for generations) said so doesn’t make it true. The common authorities on grammar (Merriam-Webster, Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook) allow it.
Language changes, but rigid people afraid to expand and improve insist that it mustn’t. Note, though, that their own grammar and diction is rooted firmly in the 20th century and not the Olde English of yore.
ateamer
Pattern Altitude
The FAA seems to have no idea of how disability ratings work, and the system behind them. The aviation community could be better served by the rapid retirement of much of the FAA medical division, and replacement with 100% active aviators (include a requirement that 50% of the staff must fly at least 50 hours a year for personal use) with less than 20 years in practice, and half of them with less than 10 years.
Brad W
Pattern Altitude
In one small way, I wish there was some single standard database, from which I could pull a report for "ALL medical visits since a particular date.
This is the thing that gives me the most heartburn about ever going in for another FAA medical. I qualify for basic med and it's been quite some time since my last medical. I used to try to do a good job of keeping a file to record every medical visit, but with some very long rusty pilot periods in my life I'd lost focus on keeping that up. That coupled with just getting older, I've been to more doctors and more pharmacists and more medical labs since my last medical than I would ever be able to accurately list. Doubt I could even get close.
Thankfully I could if pressed probably go back 3 years...but that's only thanks to the fact that I've had the same medical insurance for longer than that so they would probably have records that are close enough.
2nd to that, the other stressor I have about going back for a medical is the downright stupid over-simple questions and how to answer them.
At anytime in your life have you ever been dizzy. Yeah, pretty safe bet that every human that has ever walked the earth has been dizzy, even newborn babies! Idiotic question if you ask me....no way to honestly answer that without ringing some red flag bell.
Was I completely honest for every time I've answered that question in the past?...or did I read into it that they only wanted Yes answers for cases that were medical mysteries or related to some medical diagnosis other than playground equipment, or not eating all day and standing up too fast....
And I've I'm completely honest and answer YES now, but I used common sense the previously, are they going to ding me for lying previously?
This is the thing that gives me the most heartburn about ever going in for another FAA medical. I qualify for basic med and it's been quite some time since my last medical. I used to try to do a good job of keeping a file to record every medical visit, but with some very long rusty pilot periods in my life I'd lost focus on keeping that up. That coupled with just getting older, I've been to more doctors and more pharmacists and more medical labs since my last medical than I would ever be able to accurately list. Doubt I could even get close.
Thankfully I could if pressed probably go back 3 years...but that's only thanks to the fact that I've had the same medical insurance for longer than that so they would probably have records that are close enough.
2nd to that, the other stressor I have about going back for a medical is the downright stupid over-simple questions and how to answer them.
At anytime in your life have you ever been dizzy. Yeah, pretty safe bet that every human that has ever walked the earth has been dizzy, even newborn babies! Idiotic question if you ask me....no way to honestly answer that without ringing some red flag bell.
Was I completely honest for every time I've answered that question in the past?...or did I read into it that they only wanted Yes answers for cases that were medical mysteries or related to some medical diagnosis other than playground equipment, or not eating all day and standing up too fast....
And I've I'm completely honest and answer YES now, but I used common sense the previously, are they going to ding me for lying previously?
bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
And the answer to the last question, is "no, if it does not impact your certifiability". But if it would have required a document when you omitted, that you did not provide AND chose not to report and you did it more than once, "this one's gonna hurt".
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Kenny Phillips
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It's easy to "opt out". Don't get a medical.
They illegally put the basic med there as well as pilot certificates. There's no way to opt out because the FAA won't obey the law.
Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
Ron, you complain about this all. the. time.
Griping to us does no good. What are you doing about it?
Katamarino
Pattern Altitude
I find it weird how many people seem to think that being a "vet" is somehow automatically a special accomplishment. They might have been a dishonorably discharged cook on a domestic base for 2 years, it's not exactly hero stuff.
Vets are just a subset of the general population with as many frauds, liars and charlatans as the rest of us. I've encountered more than one of those vets in aviation.
AchillesLastStand
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AchillesLastStand
Mehhh. They are a subset of the population that have made great sacrifices regardless of their intentions or outcomes.
bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
=katamarino said:
...and yet I have a soft spot for these guys.....but true dat.
Short of having the resources to file a federal suit, not much I can do. I've complained to the FAA and DOT IGs and through my congressmen several times.
Katamarino
Pattern Altitude
Some of them are, for sure. And some are not.
I was in the UK reserves for a couple of years before I moved abroad and I absolutely don't think I deserve any kind of reverence for it.
Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
Well, I'm sorry, but it's unlikely the members of PoA are going to fund a lawsuit for you. Our planes suck up all our money. Even if we did, the likelihood of changing the FAA is extremely slim. We all have to be a bit selective regarding at which windmills we choose to tilt, and sometimes that means just accepting things that aren't going to change.
Did I ask you to? Since when was griping about the FAA against the ROC here? We'd have to delete half the posts in the medical forum if it were.
Half Fast
Touchdown! Greaser!
bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
.....have the peace to accept what you cannot change and knowledge of what you can change...
As to the original poster, Pricniaply they find out in the secveen part investigation one of the parts of which is the "health and state of the pilot" after any accident, incident, or hotline call in. Then the HCFA database (anything insurance paid for) is FAIR GAME.
Barack spend a lot of effort naming all the databases in all depts, the same.
As to the original poster, Pricniaply they find out in the secveen part investigation one of the parts of which is the "health and state of the pilot" after any accident, incident, or hotline call in. Then the HCFA database (anything insurance paid for) is FAIR GAME.
Barack spend a lot of effort naming all the databases in all depts, the same.
George S
Pre-Flight
How much $ do you think it would cost to file a suit against them? If enough people got together I would contribute some cash and I’m sure many people feel the same way.
Isosceles
Pre-takeoff checklist
Doesn't CMS aka HCFA contain only medicare data? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Medicare_&_Medicaid_Services
bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
CMS, yes. But remember your part 19 of the application? That's a subpoena list!