INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana’s attorney general has dropped a lawsuit accusing the state’s largest hospital system of violating patient privacy laws after a doctor told a newspaper that a 10-year-old Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for an abortion.
A federal judge last week granted Attorney General Todd Rokita’s request to dismiss his lawsuit, which the Republican filed last year against Indiana University Health and IU Healthcare Associates, The Indianapolis Star reported.
The lawsuit accused the hospital system of violating HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and state law by failing to protect medical records in the case of a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to Indiana to get abortion pills.
Attorneys for Dr. Caitlin Bernard later said she did not share personally identifiable information about the girl, and such details were not reported in a July 1, 2022, Star story, but it became a flashpoint in the abortion debate days after the U.S. Supreme Court. overturned by Roe v. Wade in June.
A federal judge in Indianapolis initially granted IU Health’s motion to dismiss the case in June, prompting Rokita to file an amended complaint in July. His office then filed to dismiss the case last week, writing that the state’s initial complaints have been satisfied by actions taken by IU Health since The Star first reported the girl’s case.
Those measures include continuing to train employees not to talk about patients in public and informing employees that if contacted by a reporter, they should notify the public relations or communications department before responding, Rokita’s termination notice states.
“We are pleased that the information sought by the office more than two years ago has finally been delivered and the necessary steps have been taken to accurately and consistently train our employees to protect patients and their healthcare staff,” Rokita said in a statement Monday.
However, IU Health said it has always had such policies in place and is dismayed by the claim that these were corrective actions taken in response to Rokita’s suit.
“IU Health has and will continue to maintain its robust HIPAA compliance policies and training for its team members, as it has done for years,” the statement said. “While we are pleased that the Indiana Attorney General’s Office voluntarily decided to dismiss the case, we are disappointed that the state’s limited taxpayer resources were devoted to this matter after the court dismissed the first appeal on the merits.”
Bernard was reprimanded by the Indiana Board of Medical Licensing in May 2023 for violating privacy laws by speaking publicly about the girl’s treatment.
That was a far cry from the suspension of his medical license requested by Rokita’s office, and IU Health’s own internal investigation found that Bernard did not violate privacy laws.
Meanwhile, Rokita was reprimanded and fined $250 by the Indiana Supreme Court for making statements about Bernard that violated lawyers’ rules of professional conduct.
