Corrected at 2:01 p.m. on Thursday, May 2. Salina Police Department officers are not bound by the HIPAA privacy rule in matters of public safety.
Quotes from a ResCare employee were removed from this article.
Journalists collect and provide information for the public, and any information shared by medical staff to journalists is considered on the record unless the source identifies otherwise.
By OLIVIA BERGMEIER
Lead Reporter - Salina Post
A ResCare resident pulled a fire alarm yesterday, Wednesday, May 1, after an employee delayed assisting him with a phone call.
Salina Police Department (SPD) Sgt. Kyle Tonniges said at 7:27 p.m., dispatch staff sent SPD officers to the 1200 block of North Fourth Street for the fire alarm and met with the resident — 43-year-old Christopher Fortner.
"When we arrived, we spoke to one of the residents [Fortner] who said he pulled the fire alarm because he was upset," Tonniges said. "[A] staff member said he was upset because he wanted to use the phone and she was too busy to help him, so he had made some threats to kill her and then pulled the fire alarm."
Tonniges said after gathering the information from staff and other residents, SPD officers arrested Fortner for criminal threat and pulling a charge for falsely pulling the fire alarm.
READ MORE: Saline County Commission approves new pretrial software, RFD Three land purchase
All information contained in this article is courtesy Salina Police Department records.
The information below is from a Nov. 20, 2020 Forbes article by Stephanie Sarkis titled "HIPAA Doesn’t Apply To The Media And Employers."
Who is not required to follow HIPAA? The list includes employers, school districts, state child protective services agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the media.
If medical staff disclosed health information to a reporter, and the medical staff did not have permission from the patient, the medical staff may have violated HIPAA, but the reporter has not. Reporters and journalists do have a code of ethics to follow. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) states that ethical journalism is “accurate, fair, and thorough.”