Garbage is sometimes a HIPAA violation

After the Supreme Court decided to end federal protection for abortion in June, many abortion advocates and lawmakers started agitating for the Biden administration to make changes to the medical privacy law HIPAA. That’s because HIPAA has many, many gaps and doesn’t actually keep information around abortion safe in many situations.

Here’s something HIPAA does do, though — govern garbage! It’s a HIPAA violation for someone to do what the New England Dermatology and Laser Center (NEDLC) did last year: throw away containers with patient labels on them in a parking lot dumpster. The labels had patient names and birthdays on them, and a security guard found them. The Department of Health and Human Services did an investigation, and NEDLC...

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