arkansas flu deaths

for some reason arkansas is under reporting flu deaths and blaiming it on hippa.
news.findlaw.com...

Do you think their under reporting to keep people from panicking and also asking too many questions? I would not think just reporting stats would be a hippa violation.

i don't either, my mother works in a local hospital and they are packed, my son was in another hospital from the flu and they had alot of people in there too when we were there recently.

I had the stuff my self and it almost killed me, when I went to the hospital it was packed and the wierd thing is the doctor would not admit I had the flu. There must have been 30-40 people in the ER with the same symptoms but we did not have the flu. I know of some people that have been down for weeks with this stuff

amuk that sounds familiar, we took my 3 yr. old to the ER and the doctor told us he had bronchitis, took him back the next day to a different doctor and he had the flu and pneumonia, we spent a week in the hospital while he recovered.

I emailed a very good friend who is a medical doctor after reading this thread and getting concerned...
If there were a conspiracy concerning flu deaths he would certainly tell me.
Here's what he emailed me back with:


"First, the link to the article is accurate, as far as it goes. Yes, there is a Federal fine of $10,000 per occurrence of disclosing privileged info to anyone. This means if a spokesman for a hospital discloses one and only one time, the information to a room full of 100 reporters, then the fine is $1,000,000.00 of which he is PERSONALLY liable. (if there is no consent to release).

This will delay, I'm sure, the dissemination of information to the public about an outbreak of any disease.
Don't like it?
Talk to your Congrescritter.
It is a Federal Law.
It is not a coverup.

Re: the comments on the article... Sounds like the rantings of the ignorant and paranoid.

There are lots of viruses that are "flu-like" but are definitely not the "FLU". There is a rapid test for the flu, which is very accurate, but relatively expensive. (I'm not sure, but seems like I've heard somewhere around $100)

If one is sick with a flu like illness, and the test is negative, then you probably don't have the flu. As with any test, confirmation is always nice, and if it is repeated later, it may be positive at that time.

Reportability of certain infectious diseases is required, but is a state to state regulation. In many states influenza is reportable. For every positive test, certain info is reported to the State Health Department. It is the responsibility of the State HD to disseminate the appropriate information to the public. That is NOT a HIPPA violation.

What these people need to ask is, "why isn't the state health department fulfilling their role in this? (of course, they probably are, but they are too panicked and paranoid and believe in too many conspiracy theories to believe THEM!)"

This is from an MD at a major medical facility in the southeastern US.


[Edited on 6-1-2004 by intelgurl]

very accurate and probably does not sound too specific to me reguarding flu test at 100 bucks a pop. i think most dr.'s will rely on the information provided by the patient and the symptoms to make their diagnosis if one has the flu or not. i could never tell the difference if i had the flu or just a bad cold until i learned what the symptons were and what the difference was between them.
i am good friends with my dr. and he stated to me that the flu is not reportable here, but it is optional.