NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt University Medical Center is going through a federal civil rights investigation after turning the medical data of transgender sufferers over to Tennessee’s legal professional normal, hospital officers have confirmed.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ investigation comes simply weeks after two sufferers sued VUMC for releasing their data to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti late final yr.
“We have been contacted by and are working with the Office of Civil Rights,” spokesperson John Howser mentioned in a press release late Thursday. “We have no further comment since this is an ongoing investigation.”
VUMC has come below hearth for ready months earlier than telling sufferers in June that their medical info was shared late final yr, performing solely after the existence of the requests emerged as proof in one other court docket case. The information sparked alarm for a lot of households residing within the ruby purple state the place GOP lawmakers have sought to ban gender-affirming look after transgender youth and restrict LGBTQ rights.
The sufferers suing over the discharge of their info say VUMC ought to have eliminated personally figuring out info earlier than turning over the data as a result of the hospital was conscious of Tennessee authorities’ hostile perspective towards the rights of transgender folks.
Many of the sufferers who had their personal medical info shared with Skrmetti’s workplace are state staff, or their grownup youngsters or spouses; others are on TennCare, the state’s Medicaid plan; and a few weren’t even sufferers at VUMC‘s clinic that gives transgender care.
“The more we learn about the breadth of the deeply personal information that VUMC disclosed, the more horrified we are,” mentioned legal professional Tricia Herzfeld, who’s representing the sufferers. “Our clients are encouraged that the federal government is looking into what happened here.”
HHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark relating to the civil rights investigation.
Meanwhile, Skrmetti has maintained he solely requested the VUMC affected person data as a result of he’s concerned in a “run of the mill” investigation over doable medical billing fraud and that he’s not focusing on sufferers or their households.
Yet Skrmetti has continued to draw skepticism from Democratic lawmakers and civil rights advocates after he joined a bunch of Republican attorneys normal in opposing a proposed federal rule that may restrict how legislation enforcement and state officers accumulate the medical data of those that flee their residence state to obtain abortion providers or transgender well being care.
Skrmetti can also be defending the state’s gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth and has repeatedly praised a federal appeals court docket resolution to permit the legislation to quickly go into impact.
Skrmetti’s workplace says they’d “not heard anything” concerning the civil rights investigation.
“Turning a disagreement about the law into a federal investigation would be plainly retaliatory and would reflect a dangerous politicization of federal law enforcement,” mentioned spokesperson Amy Wilhite.
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