Nebraska judge rules that HIPAA protects identity of former psych patients buried in hospital cemetery
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, February 25, 2008
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HIPAA's enforcement was put to the test when a Nebraska district judge ruled that even patients who have been buried for more than 50 years deserve the right to privacy.
Adams County, Nebraska District Judge Terri Harder ruled that HIPAA protects the PHI of nearly 1,000 former mental health patients who were buried in a Hastings Regional Center-a former mental health hospital-graveyard between 1888 and 1959, according to a February 15 Associated Press (AP) article in the Lincoln Journal Star.
The ruling came in the wake of a lawsuit that the Adams County Historical Society filed after being denied access to Hastings records that would reveal the identity of these patients. (The grave sites are not marked with names, only patient numbers.) Judge Harder ruled that HIPAA protects health information based on past, present, or future physical or mental health conditions, according to the article.
"If the requested records were released, the individuals buried would be named, and by virtue of the fact that the person was buried in the cemetery at HRC, release of these records would reveal that that individual was institutionalized for a mental illness or for a condition serious enough to require institutionalization,'' Harder told the AP.
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