HITECH Meets Dobbs: Federal Mandates, State Laws, and the Complexities of Abortion Data Sharing

AbstractFollowing the Dobbs U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022, state-dependent abortion bans and restrictions have created legal and logistical challenges for patients, clinicians, and healthcare organizations. Many patients now travel across state lines for legal abortion services; this raises several concerns, including about health data privacy in the wake of some highly restrictive state laws. Federal laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, and the 21st Century Cures Act, mandate electronic health record interoperability, and this article considers how these laws complicate efforts to protect the privacy of patients' abortion-related data. Specifically, this article focuses on intersections of federal and state law that are relevant to abortion care patients' privacy. It also canvasses added privacy protections, such as geofencing, data segmentation, and natural language processing filters, and suggests how they might help.