Good point about HIPPA, PG.
From what people are posting, it seems like some PCPs don’t honor it.
Yes, I know that I have several wonderful and amazing MDs who find HIPPA to be a huge burden in providing excellent care and don’t let it get in the way of them providing quality care. They are treating multiple generations of families and can be on the lookout for genetic conditions and predispositions.
I’m grateful we aren’t always asked to sign one more form before can confer with the doc about us or our family member–common sense still operates around here.
Just because it’s the bane of my research life and it’s really bugging me, it’s HIPAA not HIPPA.
I’d be very uncomfortable with a doctor who thinks of HIPAA as nothing more than a suggestion but that’s just me.
Got it, Romani. Not a term I use much.
HIPAA isn’t a joke. The penalties for violating it are harsh.
I went on a girls’ vacation with a bunch of women, some of whom I had never met. This one women started talking about my H. Turns out she was a patient of his and he had recently operated on her and she saw him regularly for an ongoing condition. I said - oh, I had no idea, he doesn’t tell me these things. I asked him later - did you know C was going to go on this vacation with me? Yes - she’d actually mentioned it to him last time she had seen him. But he still didn’t tell me. That’s exactly as it should be. He simply cannot discuss his patients with me, except in the most generic of terms (“I had a case today of …”). One of my best friends went to him for her third child. He did not reveal to me she was pg until such time as she decided to share the news. HIPAA really is a big deal.
I’m pretty sure my brother-in-law violated the HIPAA standards and accessed my medical records. It was years ago, and I did not know what to do about it, or how to go about looking into it. When I was ready, and I began to look into hospital compliance regulations I learned of the way that the hospital is able to track who has accessed and viewed records. Now I know.
I have found many inconsistencies re HIPAA in my dealings with the medical and dental professions around here.
Staff, some long term at my place of employment have lost their jobs through lack of respect for HIPAA. A friend was the therapist for another friend, making things extremely awkward for the therapist with party invitations and so on, till the one who was the patient finally remembered to tell me.
Think about everyone who had access to your records, office staff, billing companies, insurance company staff. Do you think if some minimum wage receptionist saw something interesting about someone she knew she wouldn’t tell someone else? It’s not the dr’s people should worry about blabbing.
@eyemamom Just my opinion, but ethical people and non-ethical people exist in all different job positions and rates of pay. And to your greater point, yes, there are often a lot of eyes on sensitive documents.
I meant more that this person probably hasn’t been well educated on hipaa, not super involved in the company, and just sees something interesting. There are tons of people who touch data every day.
My undergrad research assistants get fired if they violate HIPAA- and we’re working with records that are from people who are almost certainly dead and who lived 3,000 miles away.
So do I think that blabbing will never happen? No. Would I go to a doctor who I know violates HIPAA or who knowingly allows HIPAA violations in her/his office? Absolutely not.
And there is absolutely nothing about my medical record that I care to keep secret from anyone. But it is my information to share- not theirs.
The physicians have an obligation to ENSURE the receptionists and everyone else in the office understand their obligations under HIPAA and the consequences that flow from thr misuse of the info. I absolutely assume that the receptionists are every bit as mindful of those obligations as the doctors and in my experience that seems to be true.
Then I’m sure since there is an obligation then no office person ever just tells their friend about the person she knew who came in or a biller never sees a name she knows or a strange name to her and mentions it to her husband at night, who knows the person.
Of course that happens. But they aren’t supposed to. Again, like I said - my best friend could go to H, and he would not tell me “oh, I saw her today.”
When my kids were younger, they would help my H check the lab bill. The lab bill came from an outside vendor and would list last names, number and type of blood tests administered and cost, and it was being compared against the office printouts. It was easiest to have a two person job where one person said “Smith, 3; Jones, 4; Johnson, 8” and the other checked it off and circled any discrepancies. But technically that might be considered a violation.
When the service calls and they patch through a patient to H, he’s on Bluetooth or speaker if he’s in the car. I know to shut up and not say a word, and I’m not paying attention anyway because I don’t care, but I am hearing the patient say she’s in labor or whatever. I’m probably not supposed to but the alternative is a delay in reaching him, which is unacceptable, or taking the phone in hand which is dangerous and against the law.
I was a life insurance agent in the pre-HIPAA days and had to ask new clients questions about their medical history. I learned a lot of private details about many people in my small town but never disclosed these facts to anyone. I recall one phone conversation with a home office underwriter who shared his knowledge about a pending applicant who was going to be given a steep surcharge on a new policy.
I was encouraged to sell this rated policy to the insured because, in the underwriters opinion, he probably didn’t have much longer to live. I couldn’t tell his family or him this news, but I did tell another insurance agent this because the insured was his son-in-law. He had picked me to sell the policy to his son-in-law because he thought I was the best agent to do it. But the man was deeply offended that we wanted to charge him a steep surcharge and refused the life insurance policy. I walked out of his house deflated and upset that I had let his father-in-law down and his wife down. The man died a few years later. I was miserable for a week. Maybe his information would not have been shared with me or with the other agent today under the HIPAA laws.
My daughter used to work in a busy pharmacy and once told me she knew what was wrong with almost everyone in town, but couldn’t tell anyone about it.