HIPAA Q&A: Noting employee status
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, October 20, 2010
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to HIPAA Weekly Advisor!
Q. A patient underwent diagnostic testing in the hospital where she was employed. She received a copy of the laboratory results and when she read them she noticed that a physician had noted her employee status. Does this violate HIPAA?
A. No, this doesn’t violate HIPAA. Much depends on the hospital’s specific privacy practices, but many covered entities take extra steps to protect their employees’ privacy. The physician may have included the notation to alert others that distribution of the test results should be limited to certain employees.
Also, noting a patient’s status as an employee of any covered or noncovered entity does not violate HIPAA unless this information is inappropriately accessed along with other PHI or a security breach occurs.
Editor’s note: Chris Apgar, CISSP, is president of Apgar & Associates, LLC, in Portland, OR. He has more than 17 years of experience in information technology and specializes in security compliance, assessments, training, and strategic planning. Apgar is a board member of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange and chair of the Oregon and Southwest Washington Healthcare, Privacy and Security Forum.
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to HIPAA Weekly Advisor!
Related Products
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Q/A: Volume requirement for reporting hydration services
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- Catch up on what's new with injections and infusions
- Identify potential Medicaid RAC target areas
- Topic: CMS, OESS post new security compliance review information, checklist
- HIPAA Q&A: Level of encryption needed for email
- Capturing all necessary codes for IUD insertion and removal can be challenging
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- QA:Coding multiple initial infusions
- E-mailed
-
- Q/A: Volume requirement for reporting hydration services
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- HIPAA Q&A: Level of encryption needed for email
- Q&A: Follow CMS' coding guidelines when using modifier -25
- Catch up on what's new with injections and infusions
- CMS has reformulated payments for some bilateral procedures
- New conflicts of interest create new challenges
- Q/A. One injection code or two?
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- ED-to-inpatient transfers are flawed with safety gaps
- Searched