College coaches hiding behind HIPAA

Long before HIPAA, you had Joe Paterno, who routinely refused to disclose injuries and just hid behind this excuse: he didn't care if you liked it or not.

 

When in doubt, you can always try asking the athlete themselves. If they're happy to tell you about the injury then everybody's happy.

 

Columbus Dispatch did a giant takeout on HIPPA and college athletics.

It was posted here, but I can 't find a link.

 

The coaches are not required to discuss injuries.

If coaches/officials are not giving information you think you and your readers need/want, you should do an end around.

Get cell numbers, see if you can contact them via facebook or grab them after practice. If the SID screams, tell him that you they do a better job getting you information you need, you'd be less inclined to bypass them.

To many reporters slink off with only what is provided to them by the coaches, teleconferences, players being brought to interview rooms, etc.

 

The notion that it's against NCAA rules to violate HIPAA is absurd. NCAA rules have little connection to the outside world.

 

Had a high school version of this come up once a few years back.
Really good area player didn't play in a sectional volleyball match and her team lost to a team they would have beaten with her. Said girl was not at match.
During the interview the coach said her team obviously missed her. Not knowing the reason, I asked if she had the flu, which was going around at the time.
The coach said no, and proceded to say the player had to be rushed to the hospital the night before for an emergency operation that apparently everyone on both teams and their fans knew about -- everyone but us two media types covering the match. By the way, the coach NEVER said or asked for the info not to be reported.
The next day's paper mentioned the loss, the absence of the player and the reason, as relayed by the coach.
Someone then contacted the paper and said I broke the HIPPA law and embarassed the girl, her family, team, school, blah, blah, blah.
Later heard that the school's AD, when contacted about the incident, said that if the coach didn't want that kind of info reported, she should have not mentioned it.

 

Reporters cannot break HIPAA law. The people who inform them can.
I talked to my fiancee about it - she's a pharmacist - and said college coaches would be committing HIPPA violations discussing injuries because most of them are probably HIPAA certified.

 

There is no such thing as HIPAA "certified." It's a federal law.

And the law is pretty clear that coaches, not being health care providers, are not covered -- at least, as individuals -- under HIPAA. They can discuss injuries. The problem is that coaches may not be able to legally gain access to the medical information of their own players, since the team physicians who see them ARE bound by HIPAA not to reveal that information without the student's consent.

However, if the athletic department asks all of its players to sign a waiver of disclosure, which many schools do, then coaches can discuss injuries all they want. (Of course, those players may refuse to sign.)

So, find out about those disclosure forms and don't let coaches fool you.

 

That's what we passed along.

 

A pharmacist would know just as much about the law as we do. Maybe less since what does HIPPA certified mean. Is HIPPA a new dance move?

 

Back when I was on the college beat, I found that the Olympic sport coaches I covered (soccer, cross country, tennis) were far more likely to invoke HIPAA in terms of injuries. The high-profile coaches rarely used it (not saying they always disclosed injuries, but they didn't invoke HIPAA). I always found that interesting.

 

Ha ha ha I made a typo. Oops.
My fiancee knows HIPAA because she has to for her job. She didn't give me a detailed explanation of what she meant, but I;m willing to be she knows a little more about this than most of us Buck.