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http://www.dailynews.com/columnists/ci_20227540/l-mayor-antonio-
villaraigosa-orders-fire-chief-overturn

A day after the Los Angeles Fire Department declared it would 
stop releasing basic information to the public and media about 
many of its emergency calls, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered 
the fire chief to overturn the new policy.

The department stopped releasing some information over the 
weekend about incidents such as fires or accidents, including 
the types of injuries or basic victim information such as age or 
gender.

Fire officials cited the move as an attempt to meet the federal 
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a law 
passed in 1996 and amended in 2009 that tightens restrictions on 
patients' medical privacy.

The LAFD claimed it was following advice from the office of City 
Attorney Carmen Trutanich.

"If we continued to post it ... we would be violating HIPAA," 
said Capt. Jaime Moore, LAFD spokesman. "We cannot give out 
pertinent medical information, anything related to address, age, 
gender."

But Villaraigosa, in a letter to Fire Chief Brian Cummings, 
pointed out that the department had not been issued a formal 
written opinion from the City Attorney's Office, and ordered 
LAFD to resume releasing the information.

"I believe it is our duty to provide information to the media 
and the public," Villaraigosa wrote. "At a time when the Los 
Angeles Fire Department needs more transparency - not less - I'm 
directing you to immediately resume releasing information that 
provides LAFD incident specifics without violating federal law."
LAFD's decision to cite HIPAA as a reason to stop releasing 
information comes just as the department faces heavy criticism 
for misleading city officials about response times and dispatch 
problems that left some emergency calls unanswered.

Fire officials said the timing of the new policy was 
coincidental, and not in retaliation for the negative media 
attention on the department.

"The timing is horrible, but it has nothing to do with our 
response times," Moore said. "This only has to do with medical 
information. That's the furthest thing from the truth."

But that explanation rang false to the department's own rank-and-
file.

"I doubt that it's just some coincidence, that all of a sudden 
(Cummings is) going to issue a media blackout and when the media 
is X-raying him," said Pat McOsker, president of the 
firefighters union."

The City Attorney's Office has been advising the department on 
HIPAA issues for years, but the decision ultimately rests with 
the department, said Trutanich spokesman Frank Mateljan.

"HIPAA is not necessarily a blanket prohibition against the 
release of all public information," Mateljan said. "There are 
lots of complicated issues including HIPAA and privacy concerns 
that we continue to advise the department on, but we've been 
consistent with our advice over the years."

The new policy will likely fall apart if challenged under the 
Public Records Act and open the city to lawsuits, according to 
Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspapers 
Publishers Association.

"It certainly is a novel interpretation of HIPAA as I understand 
it," Ewert said. "LAFD is a care provider as defined by law, but 
the information with respect to response times and locations of 
responses, I just don't see how that falls into the category of 
individually identifiable information.

"The timing of the legal analysis is a bit questionable in light 
of all the investigation that has been done up to this point," 
Ewert said.