HIPAA Blog

[ Tuesday, May 12, 2020 ]

 

I've been quoted several times by the media about the recent OCR guidance on allowing covered entities to provide Covid-19 infection information to first responders.  There was an article this morning about the state of Tennessee, and its efforts to notify law enforcement agencies of the identity of Covid-19 patients.

Given OCR's recent guidance, I would say that the governors program (providing names of all Covid-19 patients to police agencies that enter into a memorandum of understanding with the state) is likely permitted under HIPAA (I'm assuming the MoU requires some level of privacy protection, and the program is otherwise reasonable).

As I've stated elsewhere, I think a blanket sharing of PHI with first responders is too loose a standard.  In my opinion, if the whole list of individuals is shared, it should only be shared with dispatchers, who should use the information to inform first responders who are about to contact the infected individual.  I would prefer that the state health department, which keeps the list of reported positive tests, initiate a hotline for first responders (preferrably dispatchers, but possibly even officers themselves if necessary); that way, the information is filtered by a smaller universe of recipients.  That's not a cure in and of itself, but in my opinion it's more reasonable, and therefore the preferable option.

UPDATE: I said I was quoted several times, but in case you want a more fulsome explanation of how I think you should proceed, check out this article by the inestimable Theresa Defino.

Update 2: If I was a Knoxville cop, I'd be wondering if the mayor has my back.  How about, instead of taking good information away from your force, setting up a system within your force to make sure the information is only used for good?  It's one thing to say, "the state shouldn't be distributing the data the way it is because someone may misuse it," but this is basically saying "don't give it to us because WE will misuse it."

Jeff [1:26 PM]

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