Northwestern Mem’l Hosp. v. Ashcroft

HIPAA

Northwestern Mem’l Hosp. v. Ashcroft, No. 04-1379 (7th
Cir. Mar. 26, 2004)

The
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit determined that the "preemption"
provisions of the HIPAA Privacy Rule do not apply when the issue in a case is
whether federal, rather than state, evidentiary rules apply. The preemption
provisions of the HIPAA Privacy Rule provide that the Privacy Rule applies unless
state law is more protective of a patient’s rights. The trial court determined
that Illinois law prohibited the use in judicial proceedings of the medical
records of women who received "partial birth" abortions. Since Illinois
law was more protective of privacy than HIPAA, the trial court ruled that the
medical records could not be used as evidence. The appellate court ruled that
introduction of the medical records raised evidentiary questions and that federal
law rather than state law governed because the case is being tried in federal
court. Specifically, the court noted that "[t]he enforcement of federal
law might be hamstrung if state-law privileges more stringent than any federal
privilege regarding medical records were applicable to all federal cases."
Nonetheless, the court found that the medical records were inadmissible on other
grounds, because the benefits of using them at trial was outweighed by the potential
harm to the privacy of the patients.