{"id":4928,"date":"2026-07-31T22:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4928"},"modified":"2026-07-31T22:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:20:14","slug":"under-trump-federal-agencies-are-collecting-massive-sets-of-medical-records-kff-health-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4928","title":{"rendered":"Under Trump, Federal Agencies Are Collecting Massive Sets of Medical Records – KFF Health News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly three decades ago, something now unthinkable happened here in Washington: A long-simmering debate was mutually settled<\/p>\n

Ordered by the GOP-controlled Congress and developed by the Clinton White House, a plan for the government to assign every person a \u201cunique health<\/a> identifier\u201d that could be used to track their medical records was abruptly abandoned. It could not withstand a flurry of critics who argued that a repository of Americans\u2019 sensitive health information, handled by the federal government, was not only Orwellian but also could never be fully protected.<\/p>\n

Under President Donald Trump, there\u2019s been no public debate over whether the government is entitled to Americans\u2019 medical records. Federal agencies are now simply demanding them<\/p>\n

Our new investigation at KFF Health News<\/a> \u2014 conducted over four months with the help of internal emails, documents, and dozens of interviews \u2014 reveals that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has quietly pressured hospitals across the country to relinquish the medical records of emergency room patients<\/p>\n

The agency, which orders recalls of products such as home appliances and baby items, has told hospitals that they are required to hand over detailed, private health information of their patients to a private contractor, Konza Health. Officials from both the CPSC and Konza have insisted that identifying information, such as names and addresses, not be removed from the records before they\u2019re shared.<\/p>\n

In emails, CPSC officials told hospitals that if they refuse to comply with the agency\u2019s new mandate \u2014 for which it had yet to provide public notice, as legally required \u2014 they could face penalties from an information-blocking regulation<\/p>\n

The CPSC told us this approach is necessary to modernize the agency\u2019s long-standing surveillance system to identify unsafe products, which has long been sustained by humans working at hospitals<\/p>\n

But the hospital officials we spoke with, as well as technology and privacy advocates, unanimously questioned the agency\u2019s authority to gather this data, let alone mandate its collection. Hospital executives, meanwhile, have raised concerns that sharing such a swath of identifiable medical record data would violate federal health privacy law<\/p>\n

The CPSC\u2019s demand for medical record data is not an isolated incident under the Trump administration<\/p>\n

The Office of Personnel Management<\/a> is seeking identifiable health information on more than 8 million federal workers, retirees, and their relatives \u2014 even over the objection of insurance companies, unions, and privacy advocates<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is accessing medical records from some state-run health information exchanges, which allow hospitals and clinics to exchange detailed, identifiable patient information. The data, Kennedy told us, is necessary to study autism and chronic diseases<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly three decades ago, something now unthinkable happened here in Washington: A long-simmering debate was mutually settled<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[564,565,563,408,562],"class_list":["post-4928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-news","tag-agencies","tag-collecting","tag-federal","tag-trump","tag-under"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4929,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4928\/revisions\/4929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}