HIPAA limits release of information about injured soldiers
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, October 25, 2004
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When members of a Wisconsin-based National Guard unit sustained injuries in Baghdad in September, the military would say only that none of soldiers had life-threatening injuries and that three soldiers went to the hospital, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Military officials would not disclose more, saying it would violate HIPAA to do so.
Soldiers have the same rights under HIPAA as civilians, an Army spokesman told the paper. "We don't apply [the laws] any differently than any hospital would."
But some suspect that the military uses HIPAA as a front to conceal the extent and number of American casualties from the war. Jim Manley, spokesman for Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) told the Sentinel that the military should try harder to obtain consent forms from wounded soldiers and that HIPAA wasn't created to hide casualty numbers. Kennedy was pivotal in the creation and implementation of the privacy rule.
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