Grand Junction – Even though the parents of a pregnant 17-year-old tried to get medical attention for their daughter, federal health privacy rules prevented doctors from telling them about her condition.
The parents of Cheyenne Corbett suspected she was pregnant, but she denied it and used a privacy act to block them from that information, officials said.
Corbett continued to lie about her pregnancy even after she gave birth Saturday to a 6-pound, 6-ounce full- term girl in the shower of her family home, prosecutors said. The baby was abandoned in a cabinet, where she suffocated, officials said.
Corbett, a senior at Palisade High School with no criminal history, is charged as an adult with first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death.
Dr. William Plested, president of the American Medical Association, said Thursday that such medical privacy regulations create a quandary.
“They have given some important protections, but they have brought up a lot of problems,” he said. “We’re going to continue to see issues like this. It’s a combination of medical issues and ethical issues, and we have to decide whose issues are pre-eminent.”
Deputy prosecutor Tammy Erett of the 21st Judicial District told a judge Thursday that Corbett knew she was pregnant but lied to friends and family and spurned all offers of help.
Corbett’s attorney, Gordon Gallagher, told District Judge Amanda Bailey that Corbett “is obviously grieving” and needed to deal with “some mental health issues.”
Erett said several of Corbett’s friends took her and the baby’s 18-year-old father for a test that confirmed the pregnancy, upon which the father abandoned Corbett.
Erett said friends pressed Corbett to tell her parents, who had been supportive of an older sister who got pregnant out of wedlock at 18.
But Corbett’s parents were unable to confirm their daughter’s pregnancy even after her adoptive father took her to a physician in Phoenix in July.
Corbett signed a form requesting that no information about her condition be revealed to her parents. Under the rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA, her request prevented the physician from telling her parents anything about her condition.
“That is a very important issue to me now,” said Krisann Cruthers, Corbett’s mother, who said she couldn’t comment further on the advice of attorneys.
HIPAA is a voluminous and complicated set of federal privacy regulations that medical professionals say are tough to interpret. Differing state laws sometimes establish another layer of privacy protections for minors.
In most states, including Arizona and Colorado, if minors ask for privacy, their parents are not privy to medical records on sensitive medical conditions such as pregnancy or substance-abuse treatment.
When Cruthers found her cleaning up blood Saturday, she did not know about her daughter’s pregnancy, Erett told the judge. Corbett said she was menstruating heavily.
Erett said Corbett continued to deny she had given birth even after her mother took her to the hospital, where she delivered the placenta and physicians asked where her baby was.
Erett said the privacy laws had a sad outcome in Corbett’s case.
“She had a supportive family. Here they are, trying to do something, and their hands are tied,” Erett said. “When they deny that information, what are you going to do?”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
