The Department of Health and Human Services has quietly appointed Roger Severino, a former program director at the Heritage Foundation, to lead the Office of Civil Rights, raising concerns about how he will address the agency’s approach to information sharing for LGBT patients and caregivers.
The selection, which was made without any formal announcement, raised serious concerns from LGBT groups given Severino’s well-publicized opposition to provisions of the ACA that prohibit discrimination against transgender patients, according to ProPublica. He previously served as director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and as an attorney within the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
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Severino has criticized provisions of the ACA banning discrimination against transgender patients, arguing that the rule would force doctors to perform sex-reassignment surgeries. JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign said she "could not think of a more dangerous person to head up the Office of Civil Rights at HHS."
Earlier this year, HHS released new guidance indicating that the HIPAA Privacy rule allowed covered entities to share information with a patient’s friend, spouse or partner, and barred organizations from denying disclosures “for any reason" including "the sex or gender identity of the personal representative."
The OCR has also issued guidance (PDF) about how HIPAA defines the terms “marriage” and “spouse” to include “all individuals who are in lawful marriages without regard to the sex of the individuals.”
Although Severino's past offers some clues into how he might address privacy rules for LGBT patients and family members, very little is known about his approach to health data breach reporting or how he will oversee an enforcement approach that has intensified in the past year.
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OCR leadership oversaw a record number of HIPAA settlements in 2016, and the previous administration hinted that organizations may see more fines in the future—but some legal experts have said a Price-appointed OCR director could ease back on enforcement.