According to a report in the American Independent, the Michigan Department of Community Health has been requiring local health departments to transmit to a state database information about HIV patients. That may violate health privacy laws.
The American Independent: As of June 2012, the HIV Event System has collected nearly 7,000 entries of partners identified through the voluntary partner-services program, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The partner-services program was set up to help those infected with HIV contact current and former needle-sharing and sexual partners who may have been exposed to the virus. Some of the partner-services entries are anonymous, but about 4,000 of them can be traced to individuals’ names.The information in the HIV Event System is entered by local health department employees or state-certified HIV test counselors at local AIDS service organizations. These officials enter a person’s name, date of birth, and gender into the database, which generates a coded “unique identifying number” that is assigned to that individual. All subsequent files in the system are linked to that number. Therefore, if someone with access to the database knows the appropriate variables – a person’s name, date of birth, and gender – the database can provide the unique number for that person.
However, according to the former lawmaker who authored Michigan's HIV policies, that data storage may violate a law requiring such records to be destroyed after 90 days.
“The intent of the law was to encourage people to know what their status was, but also to protect people’s privacy,” said former Rep. Susan Grimes Gilbert, a Republican, in a phone interview. Grimes Gilbert – whose last name was previously Grimes Munsell before she remarried – represented the city of Howell from 1987 to 1996.“The fact that they’ve clearly had a violation of privacy means that the department better review – should review – their operations and procedures,” she said. “And it’s not just the violation [of privacy]; it’s the fact they’re keeping this data that it was never the intent of the legislature that they keep.”In short, Grimes Gilbert said, “I think they are in violation of the statute.”
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The American Independent
