  We surveyed every state and the District of Columbia to see what patient
specific information states release on hospital visits and how much potentially
identifiable information is released in those records. Thirty-three states
release hospital discharge data in some form, with varying levels of
demographic information and hospital stay details such as hospital name,
admission and discharge dates, diagnoses, doctors who attended to the patient,
payer, and cost of the stay. We compared the level of demographic and other
data to federal standards set by the Health Information Portability and
Accountability Act or HIPAA), which states do not have to adhere to for this
type of data. We found that states varied widely in whether their data was
HIPAA equivalent; while 13 were equivalent (or stricter) with demographic
fields only 3 of the 33 states that released data did so in a form that was
HIPAA equivalent across all fields.
