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HIPAA Q&A: Retirement community

HIM-HIPAA Insider, January 23, 2012

Q. We operate a retirement community that includes skilled nursing and assisted living. We iron labels with the resident’s name into their clothing. Often, when a resident passes away, the family asks us to donate the clothing to a local charity.

We are concerned that this may be a HIPAA violation since a resident’s name is considered PHI and someone picking up the clothing from us will know that person lived here and is now deceased. Unless we remove the labels prior to donation, we’re thinking about stopping the practice.

If we have the family sign a waiver of some sort, will this then release us from a potential HIPAA violation?

A.Your concern is a reasonable one, even though the patient is deceased. If the clothing will be donated to another resident within the facility, that resident’s name tags could be ironed over the original labels. If the clothing will be donated to an outside charity and the labels cannot be easily removed, you could obliterate the name with a permanent black marker.

Obliterating the name is a better approach than getting a signed waiver. Although the waiver may protect you if someone alleges a privacy violation, the public may still perceive that you’ve violated the individual’s privacy if they see donated clothing bearing the name of a deceased person.

Editor’s note: Mary D. Brandt, MBA, RHIA, CHE, CHPS, vice president of health information management at Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, TX, answered this question. She is a nationally recognized expert on patient privacy, information security, and regulatory compliance, and her publications provided some of the basis for HIPAA’s privacy regulations.
 

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