If the sample size are small, it could be a HIPAA violation.
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It could be, and I would hope that any college with small numbers would push back with a (statistical?) argument that the small numbers are too small to anonymize.
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The questions become very specific with breakdowns by age. Given that the number of transgender students is small, and that the number who would use the University health service for such case is a subset of that (many/most? would be on parents insurance and obtain care that way), identifying individual students could be done. Wouldn’t that be a HIPPA violation?
In addition, why ask what outside facility the student was referred to if that does not impact medical care offered by the University? As someone said, are they asking these questions about other types of health care?
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Likely yes, it would be a routine conflict of interest question in an audit to ensure no self-dealing is occuring.
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Not to mention that the student is being referred to an appropriate facility for care needed.
Except there is no indication this is part of a general audit. When asked for clarification, the DeSantis admin preferred to his political speech. Why are posters pretending this is anything but?
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Everyone has acknowledged that DeSantis is using both the request and the info for political purposes. See above prior posts. Some posters are also pointing out that this info is likely already collected ( and available under state FOIA) for this and any other medical condition due to routine audits.
He is asking to make a political point, but the info itself is subject to routine collection.
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That’s not why he’s demanding the information, and that’s the topic of the thread.
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See my pp. If he is going to make an issue of it, I would prefer he use actual data and not some wildly inflated number he invents. State expenditures, for any purpose, are a matter of public debate
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The Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Care voted to ban gender dysphoria treatment for minors in November. A public hearing was held on Feb 10th, the deadline date for universities to return the aggregated medical info, so it seems like the request was to prep for the hearing.
No date is set for the new rules to take effect, but speculation is March.
Wait, all treatment, or endocrine/surgical treatment? What about psychiatric treatment?
There doesn’t appear to be any limitation on psychiatric treatment in the proposed rule:
THE FULL TEXT OF THE PROPOSED RULE IS:
64B8-9.019 Standards of Practice for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria in Minors.
(1) The following therapies and procedures performed for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors are prohibited.
(a) Sex reassignment surgeries, or any other surgical procedures, that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics.
(b) Puberty blocking, hormone, and hormone antagonist therapies.
(2) Minors being treated with puberty blocking, hormone, or hormone antagonist therapies prior to the effective date of this rule may continue with such therapies.
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No, not really. Only the federal government can bring an action against a covered entity (and, yes, @vpa2019 the university health service is a covered entity). Individuals do not have standing to bring an action against a HIPAA violator. Because the privacy provision is a “rule.” It’s the “privacy rule” of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Specifically, it’s the Office of Civil Rights that is responsible for enforcing the HIPAA privacy rule. Don’t ask me how I know this. Actually, I’m a journalist, and I’ve covered this. You get to know a lot of minutia when you’re a journalist. Fun at cocktail parties 
Now, that’s not to say that a lawyer wouldn’t find related illegalities to go after.
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There is no hipaa violation if identifying information is removed, which is the data the state is requesting. I’m not sure why the requested information is any different than a state asking for COVID vaccination info.
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If the numbers are very small, then the information may be able to be associated with a specific student, which is sometimes why public presentations of data (e.g. college admission or post-graduation outcomes by major) do not show data when the number of people in the category is very small (e.g. not showing the median pay of graduates of a major where there is only one graduate of that major). Transgender is a lot less common than COVID-19 vaccination or lack of such, so it is more likely to encounter the small number privacy issue.
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I provided institutional data for a very small college, and I sometimes refused to provide data when I knew it would be easy to identify students due to the population size & the information requested. I used FERPA and/or the rules associated with Title IV federal aid to back up my refusal. This was for institutional requests … I was never asked to provide medical information to any governmental entity.
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A private school, I presume? This request was made to public universities.
Because people who are getting the Covid vaccination aren’t regularly discriminated against, aren’t regularly the target of hate and violent attacks and more…for a start
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Oh gosh, people who did not receive the vaccine routinely lose their jobs.
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@anon32643494 - Losing a job isn’t the same as a hate crime, a violent attack or worse.
I appreciate that losing a job due to non-compliance of an employers’ requirement is a shame, however, when we accept a job of any type, we imply that we will accept the requirements that go along with the position (and there are many). In the US there are 11 states that have an “at will” employment policy, which briefly means that an employer (or an employee) may terminate the employment “at will” and without providing any explanation and those that live in those states accept that.
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