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July 24, 2001
Doctors Sue Over HIPAA Privacy Law
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The lawsuit was filed by the South Carolina Medical Association, which has a membership of 6,000 physicians. The Louisiana State Medical Society and several South Carolina physicians have joined the SCMA as plaintiffs.
The HHS regulations set the groundwork for carrying out a law - adopted at the end of the Clinton administration - that grants patients the right to see their records and to control who reviews them.
But the suit claims the new rules will increase health care costs, create more paperwork, and impede hospital pre-admission procedures.
The association claims the rules are unconstitutional because HHS drew up the 1,500 pages of regulations with little congressional input. Agencies cannot exercise more power or authority than that authorized by Congress, according to the lawsuit.
"We're not filing this because we are against anything that has to do with patient privacy," J. Capers Hiott, president of the SCMA, said at the news conference. "Physicians are one of the staunch supporters of patient privacy."
South Carolina and other states already have laws protecting patient privacy, Hiott said, and his organization wants to stop the new rules from taking effect and send them back to Congress to ensure that health care providers will have input.
The law the SCMA is challenging is Section 264 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, as it is generally known.
The society acknowledges that the HIPAA law accomplishes a number of positive health care reforms, including the simplification of health claims processing.
But it contends that Section 264 unlawfully allowed the secretary of HHS to create patient privacy regulations with virtually no congressional guidance, nor even the legislative establishment of a federal patient privacy program. "This is the point that particularly concerns physicians," the society says in a press release. "Administrative agencies are required by law to exercise no more power or authority than that authorized by Congress."
"The SCMA vigorously supports protection of patient privacy and the recognition of a physician's duty to maintain the confidence that exists within the physician/patient relationship," the society adds. "While there is no question that patient confidentiality must be protected with constant vigilance, the regulations at issue in SCMA's lawsuit represent a classic case of a cure that is worse than the disease.
"Absent very few exceptions, patient privacy is protected first by the professional duty of confidentiality that physicians bear, and second by state laws governing confidentiality and privacy."