FC: HIPAA medical privacy rule hinders reporting of Chicago disaster

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_disp 
lay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1933765

JULY 16, 2003
New Medical Privacy Rule Is Bad Medicine for Press
Chicago Porch Collapse Illustrates Problems

By Mark Fitzgerald

CHICAGO -- Opinion

Local journalists are adding their own post-mortem to the lawsuits and 
finger-pointing following the June 29 porch collapse at a Chicago apartment 
building in which 13 young adults were killed: A new federal medical 
privacy rule has undermined their ability to cover accidents by forbidding 
the disclosure of patient information that hospitals had released routinely.

The porch collapse was the first major accident story since the Health 
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) became law on April 
14. In this real-life test in Chicago, the rule proved every bit the 
hindrance to coverage that journalists had feared.

Chicago's experience with this one accident underscores the problems 
newspaper editors everywhere will face sooner or later. HIPAA, which was 
intended to give patients greater control over the release of their medical 
records, has wasted no time in become a nightmare for the press, says Ian 
Marquand, the Montana TV investigative reporter who unsuccessfully lobbied 
the federal government on behalf of the Society of Professional Journalists 
(SPJ) to include some reporting exceptions for news organizations. "Pretty 
much everything we said about HIPAA in the beginning and during the 
rule-making has come to pass," Marquand says.

Hospitals in particular are scared to death of violating HIPAA, with good 
reason: Leaking health records -- even information as innocuous as patient 
name and condition -- is punishable by a fine of $250,000 and 10 years in 
jail. "The penalties are so severe that nobody wants to be that first 
case," Marquand says.

Certainly none of the Chicago hospitals were willing to risk releasing 
information. Though 57 partygoers were injured in the porch collapse, 
Chicago readers learned the names of almost none of them because reporters 
were unable to identify anyone treated at area hospitals, unless those 
victims sought out the papers.

...




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