The wife of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is being investigated by federal officials for reportedly violating health privacy laws to promote her new menopause prescription company — allegedly through sharing her former patients' medical records.
According to records from the Department of Health and Human Services, which were then presented to the Washington Free Beacon, the HHS' Office of Civil Rights opened a June probe into an alleged breach involving Holder's wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, an obstetrician.
According to the Free Beacon, as many as 27,000 patients from Malone's former employer, Foxhall Associates, could be affected by the possible breach.
The allegations reportedly include sharing her former patients' records with Alloy, a telehealth start-up that Malone helped launch in 2021 (as chief medical officer), to produce company marketing materials.
According to the HHS website, the "[Health Insurance Portability and Accountability, or HIPAA] Privacy Rule gives individuals important controls over whether and how their protected health information is used and disclosed for marketing purposes. With limited exceptions, the Rule requires an individual's written authorization before a use or disclosure of his or her protected health information can be made for marketing."
The federal agency's definition of "marketing" involves the promotion of a "product or service that encourages recipients of the communication to purchase or use the product or service."
In that vein, the verification of "authorization" could be a focal point of the federal investigation into the possible breach, potentially involving three parties: Dr. Malone, Alloy (reportedly received $3.3 million in seed funding last year), and Foxhall Associates, a prominent women's health practice in Washington, D.C.
Foxhall conducted its own internal investigation into the allegations, and subsequently alerted HHS officials to the supposed breach last month, according to the Free Beacon.
On Wednesday afternoon, Newsmax submitted a comment request to Alloy co-founders Anne Fulenwider and Monica Molenaar. That effort initially generated a boilerplate message from Alloy, with nothing more than a greeting.
A similar request was made to Malone on Wednesday, via Twitter.
On July 11, Malone tweeted out to no one in particular, "Haters gonna hate. It's what they do. Why am I surprised?"
That prompted a lawyer named Mark Lyon to tweet a two-slide photo of an apparent letter from Dr. Nichole Pardo, Foxhall's managing partner and privacy officer. The posted letter, written on Foxhall stationary, addressed the breach accusations involving Dr. Malone.
And in his direct response to Malone's tweet, Lyon also wrote, "Haters, like people whose PHI [information] you misappropriated?"
The following day (July 14), Lyon then posted a written response from Alloy co-founder Monica Molenaar.
In her letter to Lyon, Molenaar claims that "Dr. Malone did not steal any patient information. She was given a list of emails by the practice coordinator of what she was told were her patients so that we could give them an update. A small portion of that list received an email from us and that is it. No other information was given, taken or used."
Molenaar's letter continued, "We're sorry this was done in error, but beyond sending an email, there was no additional action taken or information that we have on any patients from Dr. Malone's former practice."
From 2009-15, Eric Holder served as the 82nd attorney general, working under President Barack Obama.
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