<p>Well, the internet is the land of the knee jerk reaction…</p>
<p>Another aspect of this the story circle… with each post, this story is evolving into something more than was done. Really, is the receptionist the town gossip? Is she spreading patient’s personal information all over town?</p>
<p>Again this proves my observation of a little incomplete information becoming something bad as people fill in the blanks with possibilities. Posibilities which for the most part are evil in intention. </p>
<p>And mainly, what I am filling in here is from a finance pov. Pay your dam bill kid, don’t screw up your credit rating. Someday you’ll want a house. </p>
<p>Because I am not so offended on the personal side, I do look at this as a favor over submitting to collections. Just a difference of what more worrisome… your mom and dad knowing you had shots for anything, or going to collections and whatching all your credit cards hit 25% and your home loan interest rate availability start at 11%. </p>
<p>While I understand the posters embarassment for her daughters personal information being shared with the D. I think that’s small potatoes over the alternative. I would be chewing my kids butts even as independent adults if they can’t pay their bills and are traveling… </p>
<p>I do think this situation would be worse for the D, IF instead of telling dad about the late bill, they sent it to collections… because she’s gone and won’t be able to respond… this would show up in all the credit rating services…which could take weeks to years to clear up… so future purchases to future jobs, could be at risk… I would be more worried about my D’s fiscal responsibility at this point, then if her privacy was violated.</p>
<p>^^^… and perhaps, if the dau was sent to collections, the complaint here (not addressing you, kathiep- just giving an example) would be “WHY DIDNT THEY TELL SOMEONE before wrecking my dau’s credit?? I thought we had a good relationship with this Drs office. I’m mad and I’m not going to take it anymore!!! Time to find a Dr. whose staff won’t wreck my daus credit!!”</p>
<p>Many of the examples given above are for hypotheticals that DIDN’T HAPPEN in this case. And I guess some people just think more rigidly than I do. Hennie Penny, the sky ISNT falling here. Come on.
Again… I agree with Opie. Wow. Will wonders never cease!! ;)</p>
<p>what happened was that the receptionist shared personal information regarding a doctors appointment with someone besides the patient, and the billing part is not seperate from the reason for the appointment…for the office to inform anyone BUT the patient abut any aspect of their relationship with their doctor is a breach of privacy, no matter how 'innocent" the reason seems to be</p>
<p>the D IS an adult, its HER credit, and how she handles her bills while she is away is HER business…if you adult child didn’t pay their bills, do you want that collection agency calling you up to track them down?</p>
<p>“if you adult child didn’t pay their bills, do you want that collection agency calling you up to track them down”</p>
<p>Do you believe in preventive medicine? pre-emptive practices in medicine AVOID future serious conditions, no? that’s all this is, in financial terms.</p>
<p>Really, honestly, you’d want your kid, and till the day I die, they will be my kids… to F up their credit and that’s OK? her privacy is more important to you than her ability to own a home? </p>
<p>Would you prefer the collection agencies calling? or the opportunity to nip that cancer in the bud preventively by simply talking with your daughter about making sure she meets her financial obligations because you got a friendly (instead of an angry) heads up? </p>
<p>I love my kids, but I don’t really want them living full time with me as adults. I want them to take care of their business and finances but I reserve the right to interject. </p>
<p>We have a simple philosphy of parent advice in our household… IF I’m paying for it, you gotta listen kid… if you’re paying for it, it’s not my business. If darling D doesn’t want me to know her healthcare, phonebill, insurance, housing issues… then she should dam well pay for them and then I have nothing to say. If she can’t and I decide to pick up the slack, she’s gotta hear the lecture again… because obviously she wasn’t listening the first time around. I see a potential bigger long term problem in this situation than many here do… I see financial problems and responsibility issues potentially. The bill is the tip of the iceberg. It’s what was noticed, I’m more concerned about the possible financial habit being displayed beneath the surface…</p>
<p>If you want even a little medical privacy, be ready to shell out the money for a private hospital room. Obviously, those ‘privacy curtains’ provide no real privacy. If your roommate is even semi-conscious, he (and his visitors) will know plenty about your medical condition and history depending on the questions asked by medical staff in their presence. </p>
<p>We had a family member in the hospital recently and quickly became acquainted with the intimate details of the roommate’s medical condition and history. And because the roommate was also working with social services, we heard a lot of other information we did not need to know about his personal life. </p>
<p>Another example: The business office at the somewhat large clinic where my family receives medical care works with clients at booths. In this setting you are sharing your medical related billing/payment information with strangers (or neighbors) sitting at what is essentially a long table sectioned off with two and a half foot dividers. </p>
<p>I don’t know if HIPAA has caused the pendulum to swing to the extreme or if HIPAA is a result of a pendulum swing, but IMHO, people are na</p>
<p>Opie- my husband feels the same as you do. In his work credit history is extremely important.That one late pay even if only by a few days can follow you for years. He is a stickler for bill paying and no credit card balances. In the OP case he would be venting his frustration at the child who went off to wherever without taking care of a bill not the dr office staff.
We have one child(over 18) who has huge medical expenses including some hospitalizations. He gets frantic if he feels all the bills are not being taken care of. It is hard for a young adult to even comprehend that one hospitalization can mean 5 different bills from different locations and people you didn’t even realize you were seeing. Also that the bill needs to be paid even if you haven’t gotten one in the mail. Sometimes they get lost or the address is wrong. Your still responsible.
With her first hospitalization at college she made the mistake of giving her dorm address. she moved dorms mid year and some of the bills never made it to her. After us hounding her to call the hospital ( we knew there had to be bills) I finally called myself. I was glad to reach someone who would finally talk with me. Lucky the bill was about to go to collection.
We did have one incident that was probably a clear violation. D was headed to the hospital from the dr’s office. My husband called the hospital to give them information for insurance. The admitting clerk did tell him they were expecting her, when we called back to give some more information she told him she was in the emergency room having a chest xray. This woman also made sure to have my D sign a waiver allowing the dr to talk to us.
I have also answered the phone at home and had it be someone confirming my h’s appt the next day with a Dr. By telling me is that a violation?</p>
<p>Guess I respect my Ds privacy more than some do…how old is your kid gonna be before you treat like an adult- 30, 40? tell they have kids? guess so</p>
<p>as for private, if the staff is sharing your information, regardless of what it is, is that right?</p>
<p>and I too have worked at agencies where we get private information- do I share that nope and we should expect nothing less from those staff or volunteers either</p>
<p>at a program in San Francisco- we work with the homeless and those in crisis, and part of our training is confidentiality…to not embarrass them, to not share any information with anyone not involved in the caring of that individual</p>
<p>for a drs receptionist to talk about an ADULT patient with the patients daddy is wrong</p>
<p>Well said, Greta!
And does anyone besides me find it kinda amusing that we are talking about privacy in several CC threads-- HIPAA privacey and ACLU/ Sen. Craig bathroom stall privacy. Bathroom stalls and hospital billing cubicles-- both have flimsy dividers and both may cause GI distress.</p>
<p>cgm-
I thought your previous post (#68) was clearer when it was one line long. I see you edited it. I think you have made your position perfectly clear. Most people respect their adult child’s privacy. Its just that being ridiculously anal about this rule can cause as many problems as it solves. I have been in the same situation as mom60-- and fortunately I was able to negotiate my way through the complex insurance maze, and probably because I deal with it every day. No way my adult son would have had a clue how to deal with it all (and I learned some things along the way that saved $2500). That is an expensive lesson to learn, and he is plenty capable if handling his personal affairs. Of course, I was paying the bills, and felt within my right to have a hand in the process. Glad I did. I now have a “buddy” in the claims department who helps me personally and immendiately! What a rare pleasure! Oops,there I go putting that positive spin on this stuff again. Maybe I should be mad at her for talking to me and helping me. Instead, I wrote an email of appreciation to her supervisor. That goes a long way. Instead of complaining about bad customer service, sometimes it is nice to acknowledge good customer service. It goes a long way.</p>
<p>CGM- if your D had a bad accident and was in the hospital and not able to call you herself would you want someone to let you know.
The son of a friend had a terrible accident at school on the opposite coast. Her son had 2 surgeries before they were called. Her son was to out of it. The injury could have resulted in immobility of a limb for life. He had no use of a limb for almost 9 months. He was extremely lucky that he has regained almost full use. But his parents sure would have liked to have some say in who the Dr was who was performing the surgery. Luckily the surgeon did a great job.
Also it becomes your business when your child goes to apply to rent that first apartment and the credit has some past due payments and the landlord wants the parents to co-sign. (though my husband has told all our kids he will not cosign on a lease for them)
Also your credit score makes a difference when you go to buy a home and you want a competitive interest rate. I guess in our family we want to give our children the best start financially in the world and by helping them realize the importance of paying on time,Not spending more then you can afford is part of our job. But I guess if you look at the state of our economy many parents aren’t doing any better of a job paying their own bills on time.</p>
<p>“Guess I respect my Ds privacy more than some do…how old is your kid gonna be before you treat like an adult- 30, 40? tell they have kids? guess so”</p>
<p>As I posted earlier, my doctor’s office will track me through my mother if necessary and I’m fine with that AND I’m in my 40s.</p>
<p>“Guess I respect my Ds privacy more than some do…how old is your kid gonna be before you treat like an adult- 30, 40? tell they have kids? guess so”</p>
<p>Funny you should mention this… in the last few years I have also been taking more and more care of my mom and I honestly don’t think there’s an answer to your statement that you can stick to come hell or high water…</p>
<p>In the last 48 hours I have spent time at a hospital emergency ward, a patients room and taking care of two households, including a death of a pet chicken while mom is hospitalised. In the very near future I will besides monitioring her diet, start to make sure her bills are paid and taking more time ensuring her daily life things are OK. (amemia (sp) four units of whole blood so far… pretty soon she’ll be able to complete the tour de france.) </p>
<p>I think “life” gets in the way of privacy sometimes, whether we like it,or even want it. Her business now is having to become my business probably more than she would like or I would like, but in the very near future I will have to speak with her doctors and be included on her medical information to make sure she understands what the doctor is really saying vs. what she is hearing. </p>
<p>I can’t leave it alone and respect her privacy because I am her son, and I love my mom and at a certain point in life you find yourself having to take responsibility for somebody else. </p>
<p>So I don’t think you can really answer your own statement all the time because time changes everything.</p>
<p>mom60, the scenario you describe could very well be one where the medical providers are permitted to disclose PHI to immediate family members in order to have authorization to provide emergent care. The regs specifically permit disclosure “necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a person”. This gets back to my earlier point that most people (including, no offense, most of the posters on this thread), really don’t know what HIPAA requires or permits. Understandable, given how complex the regs are and that most people rely on summaries provided by lay sources. Hell, many, many health care providers don’t really know it either but because they have been told they could be subject to serious sancrions for violations, decide to paint every situation with a broad brush and and err on the side of non-disclosure.</p>
<p>Hard to keep up with the posts, cgm, as you keep editing them. Rhetorical question (ie no need to answer)- not sure why you are going to the mat with this one, and why you are implying that by being involved in these healthcare issues we are somehow not letting go and not letting our kids grow up. I teach my kids these skills, but need to have the opportunity to do so. If this is the first time they are having to deal with this kind of thing, I want to help them learn good skills to manage them.</p>
<p>By the way-- just curious-- the things parents post about their kids on CC-- do they have to get their kids permission or do you just choose to violate their privacy?</p>
Correct. I have sat in plenty of risk management seminars where the attorneys scare the snot out of the providers about every which way they can get sued. Easier to err on the side of caution and be overly conservative. That said, sometimes a staff person makes a mistake. Gee, around here it seems like if someone accidentally steps on your (generically speaking) toe, you go for their jugular.</p>
<p>MichaelKat- I don’t know the answer I just know that she did not hear from anyone till 2 days after the accident. The Dr at that point called her, her son was still in the hospital.</p>
<p>mom60, from the brief description you gave, if the hospital or any doc could identify the patient’s parents, HIPAA expressly permits and the providers could have and should have attempted to contact the parents and disclose what was occurring. There may have been various reasons that the medical providers did not, but HIPAA Privacy Regs is not a legitimate one if the situation involved the need to take immediate action to avoid or lessen imminent harm.</p>
<p>As often happens in this forum, a simple story takes on a life of it’s own.</p>
<p>My daughter got a couple of shots a right before she left for China. She gave the Doctors office her insurance card. She had read the policy and it looked like they would be covered, Doctors office thought they might be too. She left for China. We got the statement from the doctors office a month or so later. I asked my daughter if we should open it in an e-mail. She said yes. This was not a bill, just saying that it had been sent to the insurance company. Another envelope came from the insurance company and doctors office, also got one from her insurance company. Did not open. I sent them off to China along with cookies and misc. home stuff including other mail that had piled up for her. They arrived three weeks later at my daughters place. We didn’t talk about anything except the cookies.</p>
<p>We got no other envelopes from the Doctors office and frankly, I had forgotten all about it. We have experienced long periods between Doctor visits, insurance pay-outs and actual bills from this Doctor before. It wasn’t my appointment and as soon as I sent what I’m guessing was the bill to her, it was off my radar screen. She has her own credit card, debit card and checking account. She has been able to pay her own bills for the last three years and I must say I resent the implication that she’s a deadbeat because something happened to this one bill. Living on the other side of the world makes even the simple things more complicated.</p>
<p>I really wasn’t looking for parenting advice. I also was not planning to rant and rave at the receptionist. I didn’t go to the doctors office so would not even know who innocently (albeit wrongly) mentioned the bill to my husband.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure what should have done because uh, no, I dont’ want her credit ruined but I think sending a second bill would have been a good idea.</p>
<p>I think you will all be happy to know that after talking it over with my husband (daughter is now in South Korea and doesn’t have good internet availablity and no phone) I paid the bill and wrote a short note asking that our daughter have a separate account since she is not on our insurance and is an adult. Now we’ll just hope that she did NOT pay the bill or the Doctors office will have made a real profit. I think I will keep the conversation with our daughter (she’ll be home next week at this time!) private. Thanks for the interesting conversation everyone.</p>
Thanks for the interesting conversation everyone.</p>