The Hawai’i Legislature’s House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee met yesterday in Honolulu and was expected to continue meeting today to decide whether to delay the new medical records confidentiality law. The law, which was passed by the Legislature in
The Hawai’i Legislature’s House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee met yesterday in Honolulu and was expected to continue meeting today to decide whether to delay the new medical records confidentiality law.
The law, which was passed by the Legislature in 1999 and went into effect July 1 this year, imposes criminal penalties on people who disclose patients’ personal medical information.
House Bill No. 2 is a result of some confusion and disagreement that arose after the law went into effect four weeks ago.
Last Thursday, state Department of Health director Bruce Anderson said some healthcare providers, misunderstanding the new law, had delayed reporting communicable diseases.
“While delays have not had any serious consequences yet, timeliness is of great concern. With some of the diseases we are called to deal with, a delay of even a few hours can result in the exposure of dozens of people to serious and even life-threatening illnesses,” Anderson said.
He said the medical community “needs to know that their responsibility to report diseases and cooperate with investigations in unchanged under the new law.” Anderson stressed that patient consent is not required for mandatory disease reporting.
Governor Ben Cayetano joined the health department last week in asking that the law be delayed.
Jackie Kido, a Cayetano spokeswoman, said the governor didn’t ask for a repeal of the law— simply a year’s delay so the bugs in the legislation can be worked out.
The measure was sponsored last year by Sen. Bob Nakata, an Oahu Democrat, whose office refused to comment on the legislation yesterday.
“We’ve purged all our files,” an assistant said when asked for a copy of the bill.
Health insurance providers have also sought a delay to revise the legislation. In addition to the healthcare industry, the news media is affected.
Locally, after two head-on traffic collisions on Kaua’i last week, The Garden Island was unable to get or publish the names of people injured in the accidents. Neither police nor hospitals, both citing the new confidentiality law, would release any pertinent information about the victims or their conditions—despite calls to the newspaper from people worried whether family members had been injured.
The only name released from either accident last week was that of the 17-year-old youth who died in one of the accidents.
A representative of the Associated Press in Honolulu said there was no organized media objection to the legislation. He said news organization “probably didn’t realize the extent it was going to impact.” Bart Aronoff, a planner with the Communicable Disease Division of the state’s Department of Health, said the new law is based on a constitutional right of all Hawaiian citizens.
“The primary point of the law is to protect the privacy of an individual’s health information. The Hawai’i Constitution actually has a section that guarantees an individual’s right to privacy,” Aronoff said. Releasing medical information to the media and others “has been a matter for increasing public concern for a number of years, when the use of an individual’s health records are not in the patient’s best interests.” Aronoff said information about their health could be used to deny health insurance or to place people on mailing lists they have no desire to be on. Aronoff wasn’t sympathetic to media concerns.
“The right of the media to say how sick I am may not be a concern of the families” of the injured, he said. The new law “does not allow it.” Aronoff said the law is simply a protection afforded under the state’s unique constitution.
“We may be the only state in the entire country to do this, but we are the only state that has a constitutional right to privacy. It’s not an absolute right, but it can only be infringed upon on the basis of a compelling state interest,” not the press, Aronoff said.
Aronoff noted Hawaii’s confidentiality law in connection with HIV information, passed in 1987, was the first such law in the nation.
And, according to Aronoff, Hawai’i was the first state in the nation to have a statewide needle exchange program. He said the program is not only effective, it is administered under the aegis of the Department of Health, another first.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and dwilken@pulitzer.net
