TN: Medical Center Releases Patient Data to Culture Warriors

Vanderbilt University Medical Center complied with a request for private medical data on trans patients, leaving patients and their families fearing political reprisals from a trans-obsessed Republican party.

by Evan Urquhart

The Tennessean has confirmed reports, which initially spread on social media including in tweets by the Tennessee Holler, that transgender patients of Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently received emails informing them that their private medical records had been shared with the attorney general’s office.

The Tennessee AG, Jonathan Skrmetti, is a GOP culture warrior who has vowed to appeal a ruling that Tennessee’s drag ban violates the First Amendment while defending the free speech rights of people who incite violence against gender clinics. Skrmetti also praised a law targeting trans people for second class status by defining sex as “immutable.” Now, this zealot will have full access to the names, addresses, and private healthcare information of transgender patients who were covered by state insurance and sought treatment at VUMC from 2018 to the present.

An attorney consulted by the Tennessean explained that the request for records by the AG was legal, notwithstanding federal laws protecting patient privacy.

screenshot from the Tennessean

In screenshots of the email from VUMC the provider stated that “the Attorney General’s Office is not permitted by law to disclose these medical records or make public use of them except in the discharge of its duties or during legal proceedings involving the state.” Unfortunately this may not feel reassuring for trans patients in a state that this year instituted an unconstitutional ban on performers wearing clothing of the opposite gender. In an environment where GOP officials seem have repeatedly pushed the envelope to further their anti-trans agenda, it’s hard to know how far they’ll go or what might ultimately act as a restraint on their behavior.

While only patients of VUMC are faced with the knowledge that their private info is already in the hands of a hostile AG’s office, the situation with VUMC also has repercussions in many other states. GOP attorneys general have used similar administrative pretexts to seek access to the private medical data of trans people, particularly trans youth. Texas, Missouri, and Florida have all seen attempts by GOP officials to access personally identifying information in the form of medical records on trans individuals, in some cases casting a wide net far outside of any known investigation. While a couple providers have countersued the state to prevent the release of their patients’ private data to hostile government officials, VUMC is the first known to have complied with the request without objection, failing even to give advance notice to the patients who would be impacted.

Among the states where similar records have been requested, the situation in Texas may be the most concerning if the hospitals targeted in a similar manner in that state follow VUMC’s example. Parents of trans youth in Texas have already faced bogus child abuse investigations, causing some to flee the state out of fear their children might be removed from their families and forcibly detransitioned against medical advice. Families we’ve spoken with who stayed have generally relied on their ability to fly under the radar, but that could change if a release of private medical records reveals the treatment decisions they made for their children to hostile state authorities. With attorneys general seemingly attempting to circumvent the law to gain access to federally protected information about trans people in the first place, often doing so on made up pretexts sourced from far-right social media accounts, it’s impossible to know what further pretexts might be used to publicize or target families using this data.

“This is the worst possible news for those of us with our own children’s medical records hung up in the Attorneys’ General dragnets,” said one Texas parent, who requested anonymity for her and her family’s safety. “Of all the possible approaches to the investigation UVMC could have taken, they chose the one that was most catastrophic for some of their most vulnerable patients."

This parent, and others like her, have been relying on the hope that federal HIPAA protections would ensure that GOP officials would not be able to compile lists of trans people in the state. But she said she’s been concerned over conflicting legal advice she has recieved that failed to definitively answer whether HIPAA applied to the specific types of requests officials have submitted. VAMU’s actions suggest that HIPAA protections may be no protection. In a climate of ever-escalating attacks on the trans community from a Republican party that has been rapidly losing interest in the constitution and even democracy itself, the possibilities for misuse of information on trans people in red states are too alarming to mention, and too real not to.