Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Criminal Justice topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Senate clarifies incarceration reporting bill to avoid HIPAA concerns, adds drug examples
Summary
Senate Bill 205, revised on the floor, requires prisons and jails to provide annual reports on inmate deaths and certain medication refusals; sponsors clarified they do not seek HIPAA-protected data and added methadone and similar drugs as examples to report.
Senator Weiler explained a second substitute to Senate Bill 205, a bill requiring state prisons and county jails to provide more detailed reporting to the Legislature about inmate deaths and circumstances that might require policy responses.
Weiler said the substitute tightened language after feedback, clarifying the bill does not request HIPAA-protected individual health information. Instead, the bill would require reporting of the name of drugs that institutions refuse to dispense when refusal could indicate a systemic problem; the senator cited methadone as an example.
"We don't want a HIPAA violation... we just want the name of the drug, so we can evaluate if there needs to be a state policy on that," Weiler said.
Senators substituted the bill on the floor and the second substitute passed on a roll-call vote. The sponsor said the reporting requirement is intended to help the Legislature understand causes of increased deaths in corrections facilities and to evaluate whether state policy changes are needed.
Next steps: the bill will be transmitted to the House, and agencies and counties will be tasked with reporting under clarified confidentiality constraints if the measure becomes law.
