Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
By Wendy Ruderman, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS) PHILADELPHIA — The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia called new evidence presented by President Donald Trump’s administration weak and untrustworthy in a blistering legal response to federal efforts to investigate its doctors providing gender-affirming care. CHOP’s response, filed late Monday in federal court in Philadelphia, came in defense of accusations by the U.S. Department of Justice that it’s investigating “fraudulent billing practices“ at the hospital. Federal officials say they’re looking into whether CHOP doctors were fudging or lying about diagnoses to get private and public health insurance companies to cover off-label drug prescriptions used to treat patients with gender dysphoria — a medical condition in which a person’s body does not match their gender identity. In its filing, CHOP lawyers called the DOJ’s allegations “unreliable,” and urged U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney to disregard claims that are “threadbare, of dubious origin, and so heavily qualified and caveated as to offer the court no meaningful information.” CHOP and the DOJ are locked in a legal battle over a sweeping federal subpoena sent to the hospital in June. The subpoena seeks patient names, Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnoses, and treatment notes, in addition to doctor emails and encrypted text messages. Related: Parents of transgender children fear UPMC will hand over medical records to Justice Department In July, CHOP filed a motion to limit the scope of the subpoena to protect patient privacy. Judge Kearney is now weighing CHOP’s motion. In the latest filing, CHOP’s lawyers argued the DOJ’s “new evidence” against the hospital was unfairly “shoehorned” into a separate but related case filed last month by a group of CHOP patients and their families who also want Kearney to block the release of private medical records to the DOJ. “That new evidence should not be considered because it is not before the Court in this case and is unreliable in any event,” CHOP lawyers wrote in the filing. “The government (still) cannot establish that its need for extraordinarily sensitive and personal patient information outweighs the highest-order privacy interests on the other side of the ledger.” The DOJ did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
