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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.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. ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------