i wasn't aware HIPPA covered illegal activity...
Posted on 10/05/2012 12:42:12 PM PDT by Altariel
SARASOTA COUNTY - Doctors who prescribe pain medications sometimes find themselves in a tough spot: they may want to report suspicious or clearly illegal behavior by patients, but they are prevented from doing so by the sweeping federal medical privacy law known as HIPPA.
dministrators with the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, which is fighting a prescription drug epidemic that led to 113 overdose deaths in Sarasota and Manatee counties during 2010, thought they had found an easy way to learn more about medical patients who might be breaking the law to get pills.
Their solution? Provide doctors with a form patients could sign that would waive their privacy rights and allow detectives to examine an individual's records without getting permission from a judge, an approach that other jurisdictions in Florida are now considering.
The medical information waivers — which did not carry any indication that they were written by a law enforcement agency — were handed out last year to about 30 local pain doctors, who were asked to have patients sign them. But the measure never gained traction with doctors, and, so far, none has submitted a form signed by a patient.
Moreover, the move has drawn sharp criticism from some in the Sarasota County medical community and from defense lawyers who call it a sly way to violate a patient's constitutional privacy rights and protections under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the so-called HIPPA law.
Normally, police would have to apply for a search warrant or obtain a subpoena for the records, said Assistant Public Defender Mark Adams.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldtribune.com ...
i wasn't aware HIPPA covered illegal activity...
More surrender of rights to the almighty state.
The doctor/patient privilege is as sacrosanct as priest/penitent and lawyer/client privileges.
What needs to go is the asinine War on Drugs.
Then in the next election, throw the Nazi out.
This why more and more Americans hate law enforcement. They shoot family dogs and old ladies with abandon...now this crap.
To Hades with all of them.
2 “m”s/
dhimmi
End the tax-wasting, rights-violating, and little old lady and dog-killing War on Drugs.
The only reason drugs were ever made illegal was a sop to the Bronfmann family - who owned Seagrams and gave tons of money to Roosevelt’s campaign in 1932 - by FDR when he promised to see Prohibition repealed in 1932.
That was too much competition for Seagrams, Inc. after booze was legal again.
It never fails to amaze me how people who call themselves conservatives are in reality a bunch of authoritarian statists at heart.
Handed out a year ago, and yet never once used, and it’s making news today. Hmmmm.
It never fails to amaze me how people who call themselves conservatives are in reality a bunch of authoritarian statists at heart.
Agree. This is but one of many reasons why I'm neither Left nor Right (nor Independent) - (imo) both (all) sides suffer various 'socio-psychopathologies,' each in their own way.
‘dhimmistrators’ then :)
for the most part i agree with you, and as far as i know, REEFER MADNESS was paid for by the ABA(American Brewers Association) but my statement still stands, if people are getting legal narcotics illegally let alone for sale, i do not believe the HIPPA act covers them from prosecution... and any additional signing away of rights are not required
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