In my June 30, 2011, blog post, I discussed the indictment of Richard A. Kaye, D.O., of Suffolk, Virginia, for the wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information under the criminal provisions of HIPAA. He was the Medical Director of the Psychiatric Care Center at Sentara Obici Hospital. The indictment charged him with communicating protected health information (“PHI”) to the employer of the subject of the data, informing the employer that the subject of the PHI was a danger to others after having earlier noted on her discharge summary that she was not such a danger.
Now that all the facts are in, apparently an acquittal was proper. The alleged victim of this alleged breach was a Virginia State Trooper that had been held hostage and raped over three nights, resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”), for which Dr. Kaye treated her. The trooper was dissatisfied with his services, sought treatment elsewhere, and was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in Petersburg, where her new counselors found her to be overly frantic. She was released in her own care after an evaluation. Because of her complaint about Dr. Kaye’s treatment, the hospital terminated him.
The U.S. attorneys alleged that, in a moment of vindictiveness, Kaye reported to the trooper’s supervisors that she had been involuntarily committed and was a danger to herself or others.
The doctor’s defense was that he had called her superiors because he had had a genuine concern about her being a danger to herself and other troopers, but he did not have to put on a defense because the judge found that the prosecution had not put on sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction and found the doctor not guilty.
As I discussed in my October 19, 2011, blog post, HIPAA permits disclosure without patient consent, authorization, or opportunity to object when the disclosure is necessary to prevent a serious and imminent threat to a named individual or the public. Such a situation seems to be what went on here. And it’s good to know that one can avoid a HIPAA conviction if he or she is, in good faith, trying to do the right thing.
