After suffering serious injuries to his hand as a result of a fireworks mishap on the Fourth of July, Jason Pierre-Paul had his right index finger amputated. And we have this information now because Adam Schefter tweeted a photo of Pierre-Paul's medical chart. Schefter tweeted that "ESPN obtained medical charts" that show JPP required the amputation, which is an interesting way of putting things because you cannot "obtain" someone's medical chart. Its release must be authorized and, so, there's really only one person from whom ESPN could have obtained the document: Jason Pierre-Paul.ESPN obtained medical charts that show Giants DE Jason Pierre-Paul had right index finger amputated today. pic.twitter.com/VI5cbS1uCw
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 8, 2015
Ignoring for a second the headache I got from trying to understand what "basically waive" means, I can understand this in the sense that players are subject to abnormally intrusive scrutinizing of their medical history, including piss tests the results of which the public hears about, injuries disclosed to the public each week on team injury reports, etc., but it's hard to imagine the NFLPA, even as downtrodden as it is, would allow for the straight-up release of private medical information.Generally speaking, your medical history is private and can only be released if you authorize it's release. So, either Jason Pierre-Paul authorized Adam Schefter to tweet out his medical chart to his nearly four million followers, or Schefter obtained the chart from someone who almost certainly violated Jason Pierre-Paul's HIPAA rights.Regardless, it's a pretty fucking weird and creepy thing to do.There is language in the CBA where players basically waive HIPPA rights. https://t.co/UxTGwnebeT
— Aaron Nagler (@AaronNagler) July 8, 2015