Thanks to Al’s Morning Meeting contributor/reader Jim Sweeney (Government Computer News) who spotted this story in the (Pittsburgh) Post-Gazette. The story is about a woman who hurt herself and called 911 on her cell phone. Police did not know where she was/is and the city couldn’t trace cell calls, as most of your communities still cannot.
But here is the HIPAA angle — police cannot just call around to hospitals and get information as they once could.
The story says:
Police have been unable to cold-call hospitals, asking if a Leslie Rivera-Hager or Sheila Smith is a patient there, because of the new law protecting patient confidentiality. This can make a missing-persons search more difficult.
Before the law was passed, (New Sewickley police Chief John) Daley said: “We’d go through the phone book and call every hospital, asking if they had a patient by that name. Right now, we can’t do that.”
Police could get a search warrant if they had reason to believe that the person was in a certain hospital. But the uncertainties surrounding Rivera-Hager make that impossible.
Here are some previous Al’s Morning Meeting HIPAA horror stories.
The E-911 Angle
They could not track down the missing woman in the above story because, as you know, most cities cannot trace 911 calls from cell phones. Now, with new FCC rules allowing you to transfer your home phone number to your cell phone, it stands to reason that people will be dropping their old hardwire phone service. But that will also mean that more people will be without reliable E-911. If you call the cops on a cell service and you can’t talk or you are lying on the floor bleeding to death, they don’t know where you are.
Big problem folks.
In places like Lawrence, Kansas, the county has put the E-911 for cell calls on hold because of money, even though half of all emergency calls come in on cell now.
Casper, Wyoming just approved a contract to get E-911 for cell phones moving. Anchorage, Alaska is also planning to have the new system in place by the end of next year.
What is your community planning?
October 1 was to have been the deadline for cell companies to provide ways for 911 operators to locate cell phone callers. But federal regulators decided not to penalize mobile telephone companies that failed to meet the Oct. 1 deadline. As of last year, about 30 percent of all 911 calls are now made from cell phones, according to the National Emergency Number Association, a group that promotes the service.
The Washington Post says, “Instead, the Federal Communications Commission is giving the nation’s largest wireless carriers more time to begin rolling out systems that allow dispatchers to direct emergency workers to within 100 meters of a caller. Wireless companies said they needed the extra time because the location technology is not yet ready to be deployed across their networks.”
The Sept. 11 attacks heightened the need for E-911 capability for cell phones.
Wait, Didn’t I Pay for E-911 Service?
You sure did. But poof — states have spent it on other stuff.
You pay a wireless 911 fee every time you pay your phone bill. But look at this testimony from Sept. 2003 by Tim Berry, the State Treasurer of the State of Indiana, testifying before a House Subcommittee on telecommunications. This gets pretty juicy:
In far too many circumstances our nation’s PSAPs are not ready to receive wireless E9-1-1 capable information because money that is intended to go to E9-1-1 services is being spent on other government needs that may or may not pertain to 9-1-1. Instead of paying to deploy E9-1-1, these funds are misappropriated, misallocated, and flat out diverted away from their intended purpose, long before a dime or even a nickel can be spent on helping a PSAP.
Several states have begun a disturbing trend, as Governors and state legislatures balance their books with funds collected for E9-1-1 implementation. While I know the Committee is keenly aware of these abuses and practices, allow me to illustrate a point by sharing a recent example that occurred this past summer, in North Carolina, a state that is home to NENA’s President, Richard Taylor.
North Carolina, like many states during these lean economic years has found it difficult to balance the state’s budget. Conversely, the state’s Wireless 9-1-1 Fund has experienced a relative “boom economy” in the form of a steady stream of revenue from state 9-1-1 fees collected on phone bills for the deployment of E9-1-1. Given the number of wireless subscribers in North Carolina, the fund has accumulated a balance of nearly $58 million.
A somewhat anonymous program a few years back, this balance has not lasted long. Raiding the fund in previous years, the North Carolina state legislature became even more presumptuous during the last few days of this year’s legislative session. Typical of most state legislatures at the end of a session, the North Carolina Legislature was engaged in a heavy budget battle; striking a direct hit on 9-1-1. Late in the evening of June 30, 2003, all $58 million of the state’s Wireless 9-1-1 Fund was erased with a stroke of a pen, in passing the balanced budget for the new fiscal year.
Do Some Phones Work?
The FCC says yes. In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives the FCC’s man on 911 said, “Every nationwide carrier using a handset-based approach is offering at least one compliant handset. Both Sprint and Verizon offer their customers at least 10 location-capable handset models. Sprint alone has sold over 11.6 million such phones.”
Jonestown Anniversary Next Week
Al’s Morning Meeting reader Ron Wolf (from Ascribe) reminds me that Nov. 18 will mark the 25th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.
Five years ago, CNN described the story this way:
What is known about the end of Jonestown is that on November 18, 1978, Jim Jones ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink cyanide-poisoned punch. He told guards to shoot anyone who refused or tried to escape. Among the dead: more than 270 children.
Only two years before, Jones — the charismatic leader of the Peoples Temple, an interracial organization that helped the desperate — was the toast of San Francisco’s political circles.
But after an August 1977 magazine article detailed ex-members’ stories of beatings and forced donations, Jones abruptly moved his flock to Jonestown, a settlement in the jungle of Guyana, an Idaho-sized country on South America’s northern coast.
This anniversary might be a reason to take a fresh look at cult activity in your community. Here is a website that has lots of resources. Here’s the Yahoo directory on the issue.
NPR says a bill in Congress would require restaurant chains to post nutritional information on their menus. More than 60 percent of adult Americans are believed to be obese, and the number is rising. Some experts say that consumers need labels to learn how healthy their food is — or isn’t. The legislation, which would apply to restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets.
But, you know, I am pretty sure McDonald’s already does this and I have never read it. Let’s face it, if I am going to McDonald’s, don’t I pretty much know what I am in for? Besides, all of this information is already online. Just choose your grease bomb, click, and weep.
Employers Who Cheat
I am such a fan of John Burnett at NPR. Monday, he produced a very nice story on employers who hire undocumented workers then refuse to pay the workers.
It is, John says, a big problem because the workers have nowhere to go to complain. He says employers figure the worker will not go to the cops, and most don’t.
But in Austin, Texas, a modest special unit is taking the complaints seriously and the police want to go after employers who cheat undocumented workers.
You can listen to John’s well-sourced report here. I bet if you went and talked with undocumented workers, or even legal day workers, you would find this happens more often than anybody knew.
Al’s Morning Meeting Tip Makes Big News
In June, a reader of Al’s Morning Meeting named James Helton sent me a message that he had been contacted by somebody who wanted to give him a big award. It was not just anybody calling him, it was Congressman Tom DeLay. Helton told me that when he called to find out more, he learned the people who wanted to give him an award really wanted him to pay $300-500 to attend a dinner.
He gave me the phone number and I called it. I started asking questions about the big awards dinner and learned that hundreds of people would be invited, and all would have to pay. The person who answered the phone told me the number belonged to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
I thought it was more than a little odd that DeLay would front a fundraising effort that clearly was meant to sound like an award. I called around to some reporters I know to see if anybody wanted the story. One took me up on it. NBC Nightly News aired the story Monday night.You can see the story here.
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