• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Reality TV: An example to educate your staff

Pharmacy Regulation Resource, March 3, 2004

Patricia Reilly, RN, MBA, compliance and privacy officer at Gracedale Nursing Home in Nazareth, PA, uses an example from the television show ER during her Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) training sessions. Consider the following when educating your staff about the HIPAA privacy rule:

Abby is an emergency room (ER) nurse. She has a brother in the military who is visiting her. His behavior is very erratic and he has wide mood swings. She is concerned about him, but he refuses to talk to her about his condition.

Abby goes to work the next day and calls the military base where he is stationed. She tells base officials she has a patient from the base in the ER and gives her brother's name. She asks military officials to fax her brother's medical records to the ER so the hospital can treat him appropriately, and they comply.

Abby's brother was not a patient at the hospital. She did not have a medical need for the information; she simply wanted the information. She used her position at the hospital to access information she was not entitled to have, which is a violation of the HIPAA privacy rule.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive