Committee adopts amendment extending Vermont protections to out-of-state providers and tightens patient-data limits

The House Committee on Health Care on April 11 approved an amended version of S.28, an act concerning access to certain legally protected health care services, advancing a draft that expands Vermont's protections for providers and patients and tightens limits on disclosure of protected health information.

Committee members voted to adopt the bill as amended (version 3.4). The amendments add language that would extend the protections available under Vermont law to a person who previously undertook one or more acts or omissions while in another U.S. jurisdiction to aid, encourage or attempt to aid or encourage legally protected reproductive or gender-affirming health care services, provided those acts were lawful where they occurred; they also expand an existing noncooperation shield to federal investigations and refine exceptions to a proposed ban on certain disclosures of protected health information.

The measure as amended places the new cross‑jurisdiction protection in the statutory definition of "legally protected health care activity," and adds a separate change to the consumer-protection chapter by revising the definition of "health care services" to list medical, dental, behavioral health, mental…