HIPAA Q&A: Seeking drug prescriptions
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, August 16, 2010
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Q. A physician suspects that a patient is a drug seeker and requests a list of the patient’s prescribed drugs from his or her pharmacist or health plan. The physician wants to determine whether the patient is receiving narcotic prescriptions from other physicians. Has the physician violated HIPAA?
A. The inquiry does not violate the HIPAA Privacy Rule as long as it pertains to patient treatment. A physician intending to notify law enforcement officials or otherwise disclose the patient’s drug-seeking behavior, if found to be true, would be in violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
The purpose of the request determines its propriety. It must pertain directly to patient treatment. Pharmacists and health plans may not be able to provide a complete list of all prescriptions if any are intended to treat a health condition that is specially protected under another federal law or state privacy law.
Editor’s note: Chris Apgar, CISSP, president of Apgar & Associates, LLC, in Portland, OR, answered this question. Apgar has more than 17 years of experience in information technology and specializes in security compliance, assessments, training, and strategic planning. He is a board member of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange and chair of the Oregon and Southwest Washington Healthcare, Privacy, and Security Forum.
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