HIPAA Q&A: Patient PHI and identifiable information
Strategies for Health Care Compliance, March 1, 2015
This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Strategies for Health Care Compliance.
Q: My facility no longer registers patients under aliases, but will allow them to opt out of the patient directory. However, opting out of the registry will not exclude our patients from the operating room (OR) list. At one time, the facility's CEO received the daily OR list with full patient names so he could visit board members, donors, or others whom he knows at our facility. HIM changed this practice so that patients' names would not be on the OR schedule provided to the CEO. The CEO took this matter to the hospital attorney, who said the names could be included because the use of PHI by the CEO to determine whether and when a patient visit is appropriate is permitted by HIPAA as it is part of healthcare operations. Is it a violation of HIPAA for the CEO to use PHI to track patients in this manner?
This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Strategies for Health Care Compliance.
Related Products
-
HIPAA Privacy and Security: Coders, Billers, and the HIM Staff
This course explains the HIPAA privacy and security rules that are relevant to coders, billers, and the HIM staff. It also...
-
HIPAA Privacy and Security for Nurses and Clinical Staff
This course explains the HIPAA privacy and security rules that are relevant to nurses and other clinical staff. It also...
-
HIPAA Privacy and Security: Registration and Front Office Staff
This course explains the HIPAA privacy and security rules as applicable and relevant to the registration and front office...
-
HIPAA Privacy and Security: Nutrition, Environmental Services, & Volunteer Staff
This course explains the HIPAA privacy and security rules as applicable and relevant to nutrition, environmental services...
-
HIPAA Privacy and Security: Business Associates
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- The positive aspect of change
- Practice the six rights of medication administration
- 4 Reasons You Are Losing Nurses
- Don’t forget the three checks in medication administration
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- Differentiate between types of wound debridement
- What to include on the incident report
- Complications from immobility by body system
- Q&A: Primary, principal, and secondary diagnoses
- E-mailed
-
- 4 Reasons You Are Losing Nurses
- Challenges of antibiotic stewardship in the ICU
- Challenges of antibiotic stewardship in the ICU
- Q/A: Who must approve change in patient status for condition code 44?
- Tip: Coding for inpatient postoperative complications requires explicit documentation
- Understand which parts of the medical record coders can use
- How to assign the correct ED E/M code
- Eye flush is included in E/M facility code
- Ensure proper payment from interrupted stays
- Coding tip: Understand functional rhinoplasty procedures
- Searched
