Train office managers to keep physicians HIPAA-compliant
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, April 5, 2002
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Give them the same information, but change the rate and context, says Lewis Lorton, DDS, MSD, administrator of the Forum on Privacy and Security in Healthcare and chairman and project manager at HIPAAdocs in Columbia, MD. "[Your facility's] top level thoracic surgeon's time needs to be used in a different way than that of a medical assistant."
Physicians are probably one of your facility's biggest violation risks, says Lorton. "The reality is that for most physicians, giving care is the most important thing. They aren't cautious enough about how they leave information around. You can go anywhere and physicians are talking about patients out loud around people that don't have the right to hear that information or they leave records on desks or tables."
Patient privacy will grow more important to physicians when they see the penalties for violating the rules enforced, he says. "The first time a hospital disciplines a physician for doing something they would also discipline a clerk for, that will wake up that hospital's physicians. But it's going to be hard to do."
Go to http://www.himinfo.com/news/tip/ to read more.
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