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Notes -
The trouble is, under my understanding of HIPAA (and I work in the healthcare industry and have to give HIPAA trainings from time to time) if you don't need PHI to do your job, then accessing it is illegal. So even if he normally had access to that data as part of his job, accessing it for the purpose of whistleblowing would be illegal under HIPAA, since whistleblowing is not part of his normal healthcare duties or required for healthcare operations.
Yeah, that matches my understanding. And in this case, he didn't even have access to all or even most of the data normally: Haim ended his time with pediatric medicine in early 2021, Rufo's summary of the investigation pointed to 2022-2023, and the indictment says he went fishing for (what he perceived as) bad behavior with the actual access starting in April 2023.
For whistleblowers of uncontroversially bad acts, prosecutors are supposed to consider the public policy ramifications of bringing charges, but we're not there, here, even if everything Haim claims is true.
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