Breaking: Multiple Violation on Medical Record and Secrecy in the Last 5 Months

Nashville, Tennessee 9.29pm

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is facing a federal civil rights investigation after turning the medical records of transgender patients over to Tennessee’s attorney general, hospital officials have confirmed.

May 2023, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a report showing that 71 law enforcement agencies in 22 California counties — including Sacramento County — were sharing such data. The practice is in violation of a 2015 law that states “a (California law enforcement) agency shall not sell, share, or transfer ALPR information, except to another (California law enforcement) agency, and only as otherwise permitted by law.

March 2023, Floridian victims of rape or incest would have to provide a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record or court document to obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Rape and incest exceptions would end after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Also March 2023, South Carolina Republicans are pushing legislation that would make a person who undergoes an abortion subject to the state's homicide laws, which include the death penalty. The South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act would "ensure that an unborn child who is a victim of homicide is afforded equal protection under the homicide laws of the state." The bill would define a "person" as an "unborn child at every stage of development from fertilization until birth."

Back to Vanderbilt. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ investigation comes just weeks after two patients sued VUMC for releasing their records to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti late last year.

“We have been contacted by and are working with the Office of Civil Rights,” spokesperson John Howser said in a statement late Thursday. “We have no further comment since this is an ongoing investigation.”

VUMC has come under fire for waiting months before telling patients in June that their medical information was shared late last year, acting only after the existence of the requests emerged as evidence in another court case. The news sparked alarm for many families living in the ruby red state where GOP lawmakers have sought to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth and limit LGBTQ rights.

The patients suing over the release of their information say VUMC should have removed personally identifying information before turning over the records because the hospital was aware of Tennessee authorities’ hostile attitude toward the rights of transgender people.

Many of the patients who had their private medical information shared with Skrmetti’s office are state workers, or their adult children or spouses; others are on TennCare, the state’s Medicaid plan; and some were not even patients at VUMC’s clinic that provides transgender care.

“The more we learn about the breadth of the deeply personal information that VUMC disclosed, the more horrified we are,” said attorney Tricia Herzfeld, who is representing the patients. “Our clients are encouraged that the federal government is looking into what happened here.”

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the civil rights investigation.

Meanwhile, Skrmetti has maintained he only requested the VUMC patient records because he’s involved in a “run of the mill” investigation over possible medical billing fraud and that he is not targeting patients or their families.

Yet Skrmetti has continued to attract skepticism from Democratic lawmakers and civil rights advocates after he joined a group of Republican attorneys general in opposing a proposed federal rule that would limit how law enforcement and state officials collect the medical records of those who flee their home state to receive abortion services or transgender health care.

Skrmetti is also defending the state’s gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth and has repeatedly praised a federal appeals court decision to allow the law to temporarily go into effect.

Skrmetti’s office says they had “not heard anything” about the civil rights investigation.

“Turning a disagreement about the law into a federal investigation would be plainly retaliatory and would reflect a dangerous politicization of federal law enforcement,” said spokesperson Amy Wilhite.

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