Lawyer discusses how HIPAA restricts releasing COVID-19 data in communities

REDDING, Calif. — One concern that has been raised since the start of this pandemic is how to balance a patient's privacy rights versus the public's access to health-related data.

Katie Kraschel, a Lecturer of Law at Yale Law School, says the answers to those questions aren't as simple as they might seem.

"HIPAA is the federal law that governs how healthcare entities can release and how they handle patient's healthcare information," says Kraschel.

Things that are protected under HIPPA laws include things like names, births, deaths, treatment dates, photographs, or any other identifying factors.

However, HIPPA laws no longer apply when a hospital releases information to a public health agency.

"HIPAA stops at the point where a hospital or health center discloses information to a public health agency. And then how that agency deals with how the level of info they expose to the public is not governed by HIPAA," says Kraschel.

Meaning some public health agencies could be hiding behind HIPAA laws as a way to avoid sharing information about COVID-19 cases.

But Kraschel says people need to think before jumping to conclusions.

"It raises a lot of prickly privacy issues and we need to think carefully before making reactions to wanting that type of information about the people around us in our community," says Kraschel.