In his role as Director, Mid-States Region, Stephen Murphy, J.D., focuses on public health data access, data sharing, data modernization, public health authority and other issues. Prior to coming to the Network, Stephen was an attorney for the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) concentrating on public health data privacy and public health law. During his time at CDPH, Stephen was the City of Chicago HIPAA Privacy Officer and served on the department’s institutional review board.
Stephen has a law degree from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in economics and Spanish from University College Dublin, Ireland. Following law school, Stephen completed a judicial clerkship at the Circuit Court of Illinois, Cook County Circuit. He is licensed to practice law in California and Illinois and is a native of Ireland.
by Overview November 16, 2022 | 1 – 2:30 p.m. ESTData sharing, particularly cross-sector data sharing, is easier said than done. Inflexible and…
Many state and local public health departments are covered entities under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and must provide individuals with access to their protected health information. However, covered entities that are unfamiliar with a key provision of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and its implications for the use of written authorizations to release protected health information to a third party, may be in jeopardy of violating the right of access.
In its recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization, the United States Supreme Court held there is no constitutional right to abortion. The dissenters in Dobbs warned of far-reaching state restrictions that may include blocking pregnant individuals from traveling to another state to terminate a pregnancy; prohibiting pregnant individuals from obtaining abortion pills out-of-state; and even criminalizing the provision of information to those seeking out-of-state abortions. With these broad ramifications in mind, the threat of law enforcement gaining access to health records is a growing concern. In this fact sheet, we provide additional guidance on how HIPAA applies to abortion records. We caution that HIPAA includes several provisions permitting disclosure of an individual’s abortion records to law enforcement when specific conditions are met.
The COVID pandemic has brought into sharp focus the crucial nature of data in helping drive decision-making, directing public health interventions, focusing limited resources, and allocating precious grant dollars. The new federal Information Blocking Rule may provide local and state health departments with an additional tool to enhance collection of key public health data and overcome some of the barriers to reporting of data by health care providers and others.
