Whether the patient privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 1320d, et seq., and its regulations, protects against discovery of "individually identifiable health information" of non-parties to the pending litigation against a health care provider, where the information sought is at best tangentially relevant to the underlying claims of negligence against the provider, even though courts ostensibly have authority to direct disclosure of protected information that violates HIPAA?

Whether the patient privacy provisions of HIPAA protect against discovery of 'individually identifiable health information' of non-parties in a negligence lawsuit