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Violating HIPAA rights and “violating HIPAA” aren’t the same thing. The rights granted by HIPAA are universal, everybody’s got them and anybody can violate them, it’s just that healthcare professionals are bound to not do that. You could violate my HIPAA “rights” all day and not get in trouble, because the law around protecting those rights does not apply to you. I could still write in a memo that the associated behavior is a dick move or a troubling issue with your character and ethics though. Anyway, possibly poorly-worded title aside, it is made clear that Lim was receiving information from someone that clearly was violating HIPAA laws. Here is the text: Dion Lim Violates HIPAA Rights of a Victim of Violence & Invades Her Privacy
• Dion Lim released an x-ray of the victim of a stabbing—without the victim’s permission, in a clear violation of the victim’s HIPAA and privacy rights.
o She claimed online that she had her grandson’s permission, but there is no indication he was authorized to grant consent on her behalf—and he was not the one to provide the photo, which she made clear in a tweet explaining she showed the x-ray to him, “and explained the decision to share it” as part of pressure to ensure the case was prosecuted.
▪ This suggests Ms. Lim was received a patient’s privileged medical records from another unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA.
• In connection with that same case, Ms. Lim posted video of the brutal stabbing.
o Despite the DA’s Office’s press release referencing the victim’s request for privacy (which was reiterated at the May 7, 2021 press conference in which Ms. Lim was present), she has not taken down this post.
It says that the victim’s HIPAA rights were violated in the process of that information being released, which appears to be objectively true. The second reference goes further to clarify:> This suggests Ms. Lim was received a patient’s privileged medical
records from another unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA. The only way to read that sentence as an accusation of Lim violating HIPAA would be to read it and conclude that she was both “an unauthorized source in violation of HIPAA” and also the reporter that the unauthorized source shared the information with (in violation of HIPAA, the law) Calling the whole document “Trumpian” is kind of extreme when the criticism is “There’s an ambiguous phrase in it and I will not be addressing the clarifying language a couple sentences away from it” or “I think this lawyer meant ‘statutes’ when he wrote ‘rights’ which I imagine makes him wrong” |