The Village Voice says things are rather tense at the New York Post after it incorrectly reported on Monday that an alleged killer received a liver transplant at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Frederik Joelving of Reuters Health reported on Tuesday that the hospital denied the transplant had taken place there.
That was followed by a correction in the Post on Wednesday morning. The original story is no longer available on the Post‘s site but is available through Google’s cache.
According to the Village Voice, which quotes unnamed sources in the Post newsroom, “Rupert Murdoch was so enthralled with the story when it ran, that he called Post editor-in-chief Col Allan to personally congratulate him on it.” It also says the tip for the story came from Allan.
Because of the Post‘s story, the hospital eventually had to deny that Johnny Concepcion, accused of killing his wife, received a transplant there after eating rat poison in a suicide attempt. Hospital comments on whether a patient has been treated are fairly unusual as hospitals try not to run afoul of the privacy rules outlines in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
In fact, the Post‘s correction says the hospital declined to comment before it published the original story, citing HIPAA, but that “Curiously, the hospital now sees itself free to publicly discuss Concepcion’s case.”
Speaking of HIPAA, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press recently released “FERPA, HIPAA & DPPA: How federal privacy laws affect newsgathering,” a guide to federal privacy protection laws.
The section on HIPAA explains the history of the privacy rules, the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, and discusses how it has been misunderstood and misused to keep information from reporters. AHCJ President Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica, is quoted extensively and offers examples of its misapplication. The piece also outlines what the law does allow.
