Balancing Act: Privacy Rights of Convicted Sex Offenders and HIPAA

2007:

In 2006, the Government Accountability Office ("GAO") issued a report concerning the prevalence of registered sex offenders living in long-term care facilities. While each state has adopted its own approach to sex offender notification and identification, long-term care facilities are in a unique position and face complex questions when a resident has been identified as a convicted sex offender.

Such questions include whether a facility can disseminate information about an offender's convictions to staff members or other residents, or whether disclosing this information violates the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

Ensuring the confidentiality of protected health information ("PHI") and averting serious consequences that could result from indiscriminate disclosure of such information while protecting the safety of all residents are among the most challenging issues confronting health care providers today.


PHI is defined as "individually identifiable health information ("IIHI") that is (1) transmitted by electronic media; (2) maintained in any medium described in the definition of electronic media; or (3) transmitted or maintained in any other form or medium." 45 CFR § 160.103. ..Continued.. by Patricia A. Markus and Erin E. Jochum of a Law Firm

Bill seeks nursing home unit for aggressive elderly

2-13-15 Iowa:

Iowa would consider setting up a special nursing home unit for elderly people who are combative or sexually aggressive, under a bill that took its first step forward Thursday.

The bill, Senate File 142, comes amid questions about what will be done with elderly psychiatric patients — including four sex offenders — now living at the state mental institution at Clarinda. Gov. Terry Branstad’s administration is moving to close that hospital and another one at Mount Pleasant.

State officials have been talking for several years about designating a nursing home facility for elderly people whose sexual or physical aggression poses a danger to other residents.

The new bill calls for a task force to be formed to look at how the state could set up such a facility, which could be run by the government or by a private agency using state money.

Sex offenders at Clarinda institute taken off registry

This facility is not civil commitment, instead Iowa's mental illness facility.

2-2-2015 Iowa:

Clarinda, Ia. – Four elderly sex offenders who live at the state mental health institute here have been taken off Iowa's public sex-offender registry, raising fears that state officials will quietly transfer the offenders to private nursing homes should the facility be closed.

Opponents of the planned hospital closure have been buzzing about the four offenders' rumored removal from the online registry. State officials confirmed the deletions Monday, but said the action was unrelated to the possible closure of the mental hospital.

Karin Hamilton, a Department of Public Safety administrator who oversees the registry, said her department has removed about 100 sex offenders' names from the public website in the past two months or so. The deletions were due to legal questions over who should be placed on the registry, she said.

The deleted names included the four sex offenders who are committed to a locked unit at the Clarinda mental hospital, she said. The review determined that "incarcerated" offenders need not be listed, she said.