I’m more than familiar with HIPAA privacy rules on what can and cannot be collected and shared. I programmed pharmacy software for many years. PHI (protected health information) is considered phone book data - name, address, phone number.
While a hospital can maintain a directory of patients and their locations in the facility, they may not disclose PHI without the patient’s consent and a patient may opt out of being included in the hospital directory or may limit disclosure to specific individuals. If a patient opts out of the directory, the hospital will typically answer that they have no information on the specific patient.
Does that mean that Hawaii’s refusal to release the long form, could be justified under HIPAA? I mean there is all that medical info on there-—weight, height, doctor, etc..
If so, why hasn’t Hawaii used that reason, unless there is no long form and any refusal to release under HIPAA guidelines would be fraud by Hawaii if there was no medical info to be released.
In effect, you would have negative confirmation of no Hawaiian birth and the HDOH’s silence on that issue is proof.
parsy, who was just thinking
Sorry, but I posted a direct source saying EXACTLY what can be released. If you called the hospital and asked for a person by name, they can tell you if the person is there, unless they were instructed not to tell anyone. SAD isn’t exactly able to do this.