02-27-2013, 12:30 PM
Honestly, I grow tired of people who treat the law as absolute and clear, when time and time again we see how it is not.
HIPAA was not written with the special case of high-profile student athletes in mind, so to make blanket statements about its applicability without any sort of rigorous legal review is almost as speculative as us wondering about Toni's ailment.
Far more interesting to me is the form linked by 76lsjumb, a Stanford-specific policy (that may well be in place at other schools) in which student athletes allow or don't allow coaches access to health info. Can you imagine a student-athlete refusing to let a coach have access to trainer's records? At face value, they would seem to have that right; I wonder if, in practice, such a right truly exists (by which I mean without negative consequences on a player's participation in athletics). Frankly, if I was a player I'd want to disclose on an incident-by-incident basis: coach can know how bad I sprained my ankle, while my bloodwork is my business.
HIPAA was not written with the special case of high-profile student athletes in mind, so to make blanket statements about its applicability without any sort of rigorous legal review is almost as speculative as us wondering about Toni's ailment.
Far more interesting to me is the form linked by 76lsjumb, a Stanford-specific policy (that may well be in place at other schools) in which student athletes allow or don't allow coaches access to health info. Can you imagine a student-athlete refusing to let a coach have access to trainer's records? At face value, they would seem to have that right; I wonder if, in practice, such a right truly exists (by which I mean without negative consequences on a player's participation in athletics). Frankly, if I was a player I'd want to disclose on an incident-by-incident basis: coach can know how bad I sprained my ankle, while my bloodwork is my business.