When is it permissible and acceptable for employees of a law enforcement agency to administratively override a party’s refusal to allow access to that party’s health records, for that party’s benefit?

1. When is it permissible and acceptable for employees of a law enforcement agency to administratively override a party’s refusal to allow access to that party’s health records, for that party’s benefit?

A few clues in to why I think this is narrowing:

* “Permissible and acceptable” allow you to address the law and policy (ethical, moral, and technological) considerations in this kind of access, respectively. (Make sure you discuss permissibility and acceptability separately if you’re going to do both and start with the law (permissibility) first.)

* “Employees of a law enforcement agency” allows you to consider both LEOs and provider employees in different contexts (and potentially consider provider employees of a LE agencies that are and are not covered entities). Realize that you can further narrow these questions to just LEOs or just non-covered entities if the analysis is getting too long for the Memo assignment.

* “Administratively” allows you to restrict it to employee- and agency-level decisions and not consider what happens if they get a ct order, which is obvious.

* “For that party’s benefit” potentially removes some of the less-interesting HIPAA analysis out of this, like the prison accessed the prisoner’s records to get criminal evidence that the prisoner was body packing.

* Leaving the questions broad will allow you to discuss complex scenarios if you want, like, “when is someone in custody” and how does that change the analysis. (Hint: read 45 C.F.R. § 164.501 definition of “correctional institution” and § 164.512 (k) (5).)

* For the second question above, think about what it means if the law enforcement agency is not a HIPAA covered entity. (Most are not, which is when § 164.512 (k) (5) applies.)

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