Privacy regs slow investigation
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, October 4, 2004
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to HIPAA Weekly Advisor!
St. Paul, MN's Regions Hospital would not provide police with details about a patient's life-threatening head injuries, stating to do so would violate HIPAA privacy regulations, reported the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. The police said this information was crucial to the investigation because officers didn't know whether an accident or an assault had occurred.
Investigators had to seek a court order to obtain the medical records. The judge rejected the request, but appointed a guardian to work with the parties to determine whether they could exchange any information.
The victim, 19-year-old Michael Hamble, fell over a weightlifting bench onto an overturned metal rack and one of the rack's legs pierced his eye, according to the paper. An occupant of the home allegedly attempted to drive Hamble to the hospital, missing a turn and causing him to hit his head and fracture his skull. Policy eventually determined an accident-not an assault-caused the injuries.
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
- Topic: CMS, OESS post new security compliance review information, checklist
- Capturing all necessary codes for IUD insertion and removal can be challenging
- HIPAA Q&A: Level of encryption needed for email
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- QA:Coding multiple initial infusions
- News and briefs: Oklahoma Osteopathic Association against residency bill change
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- 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
- CMS has reformulated payments for some bilateral procedures
- Catch up on what's new with injections and infusions
- New conflicts of interest create new challenges
- Q&A: Follow CMS' coding guidelines when using modifier -25
- 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