HIPAA Privacy Rule

• Everything you wanted to know about HIPAA - but were afraid to ask
  • HIPAA Privacy Rule - FAQs

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...requires a covered entity to make "reasonable efforts to limit use, disclosure of, and requests for PHI to the minimum necessary to accomplish the intended purpose."  The only AHA-approved HIPAA training program, HIPAA Academy, specifically states in its training materials that HIPAA intends that personal information be limited to document headers unless absolutely required   I will quote page 4-56:

"In practice, we expect the minimum-necessary requirement to lead to compartmentalization of the medical record so that one portion of the record (the body of the report) may be readily disclosed for one purpose without compromising the privacy of the entire record."

By limiting PHI to headers, reports can easily be redacted of personal information; when the PHI is scattered throughout the reports, this information cannot be redacted.

nm

Its is all getting so frightening, the invasion by companies into peoples lives.  I have worked at nine hospitals, two trans companies on-site, three trans companies at home and never have I had a background check OR drug screen.  The policy for drug screening at the hospitals was if you seemed like you were under the influence your boss could request a drug screen but never happened to ME or any of my coworkers.  Physical exam, sure I got those when I worked at the hospitals but they paid for the physical exam and they also covered me for insurance.  The trans company I work for now does not provide medical coverage or life insurance coverage for statutory employees, so I dont see why they would be concerned about my health status.  Lets face it, they are concerned with how much we can pound away each day and that is it.  We get paid for what we produce.  So under these circumstances, they dont need to be poking their nose IN my background, my urine or my physical body.  If it is checking on my experience, well they already did that by talking to previous employers and coworkers and guess I passed the test, as I was hired.

it only cost $2/month extra - today I think it costs $19.95 but to me it's worth it because #1 it cuts all telemarketer calls (and I have been on the Do Not Call list since that began) and I can also take my phone charges off my MTSO business at tax time......

call your phone company and ask them if they offer anything like Privacy Director.  *S* 

I do occasional IC work for a provider that I have known a while now. Today i did some work for her and found something that really bothers me. The physician dictates the patient's full name, street address and home phone number in addition to her DOB. Is that HIPPA compliant? I'm sorry folks but I really don't want my street address and phone number available across the internet even if it is "so called" secure. I would like your thoughts.

the healthcare provider , i.e. the doc, establishes the standards for protecting privacy of records. You (or your service) is the Business Associate who COMPLIES with whatever standards the doctor sets. Some docs send files by email, some want encryption. Hospitals, obviously, generally do more locking down on their stuff, as they are more open to lawsuits. All YOU have to do to be HIPAA compliant is to COMPLY witih the standards the doc sets. It is not up to you to set them. Also what you and everyone else forgets about HIPAA is it is a two part process. Not only does the patient's medical records have to be disclosed BUT the patient must also suffer a loss because of the disclosure. So even if your doc stands out on the street and tells passers-by about Mrs. So and So and her athlete's foot, unless she incurs a loss from that, it's not a HIPAA violation. Remember this whole thing came about because a pharmacy tech went home and told her high school son that another classmate's father was coming in for HIV drugs...get the picture? Something private was disclosed inappropriately and that's how the girl found out her father was HIV positive.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/15/octuplet.mom.hospital/index.html

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The hospital where a California woman gave birth to octuplets in January has been fined $250,000 by the state because nearly two dozen medical workers, including doctors, illegally viewed her medical records, according to state health officials.

Nadya Suleman was the subject of controversy after giving birth to octuplets in January.

Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital, where Nadya Suleman's eight babies were born, revealed in March that 15 employees lost their jobs and eight others were disciplined for improperly accessing her computerized medical records.

There was no evidence that information from the medical files was leaked to the news media, which has intensely covered Suleman's story, according to Kathleen Billingsley, deputy director of the California Public Health Department's Center for Health Care Quality.

Six of the privacy breaches happened at other Kaiser Permanente facilities, which are linked into the same computer system housing medical records.

Suleman -- already a single mother with six children -- gave birth to octuplets conceived through in vitro fertilization, fueling controversy. News of her collecting public assistance for some of her children outraged many taxpayers.

That's what I was taught.  Everyone is in the same boat and has to take the bad with the good.  Refusing to do the hard stuff makes it worse for the other MTs on that account, and they will not appreciate it.  Until the problem doctors go poof and disappear, nobody has the right to say they can shove all the bad jobs onto the next MT because THEY are here to make money (everyone is, and someone has to type it).  And there is such a thing as Karma - one day you might log on to find ALL the work is the dictator you dread, because all the MTs that came on before you felt entitled to leave the crap work for YOU.  You really won't make any money on that shift, as opposed to doing a few bad jobs each shift.  So type them as you get them, like the rest of us. 

If everyone got together and went to management about the problem guy, that's one thing (and yes, we all feel this way about at least one doctor).  Deciding you don't have to do it because you don't want to is quite another, and often grounds for disciplinary action.  Work is often just that, hard work, and with time and practice it becomes easier.  Nobody promised you a rose garden, challenges are what this job entails.

you set your own line rate.  However, we all know that NONE of the MTSOs hiring IC MTs allow us to set our own rate.  They "offer" a rate, and we accept if it's OK.

I worked for a real cheapo doctor when I first started out.  He paid hourly and kept riding my backside to type faster because he only wanted to pay for the actual time dictated instead of the time it took to transcribe.  More than once I told him that it takes an average of 3:1 typing to talking ratio to get it done.  It worked out to be $.03 per line.  I dropped him like a bad habit.  He bounced through a few other transcriptionists who all quit on him before he wound up having to pay to outsource to a service.

I use an "f" after any abbreviation that I want to expand.  I just use the standard abbreviation plus f, so I do not forget what they are.  My ShortHand is full of things like this.

ex: cbcf  tcpf  tshf

Works for me!

Hmm...I thought that that was already in effect, that no US Govt transcription contracts could go overseas/be outsourced - at least the V.A. has that standard in place...

....reboot!

That will take care of about 95% of problems.

If you have two identical toolbars, then you may need to go to View, then Toolbars, and then Customize (way down at the bottom of the list). On the Toolbars tab, see what is checked.

If both Standard and Formatting are checked, this is where you may have your duplicate. Try unchecking either one of those and see if that puts your toolbar back the way you want it.

If that doesn't work, come back and we'll try again!

the time changes. Daylight Savings starts in April and Standard Time in October. It always works for me. Change all the clocks and change all the batteries.

For those who haven't done so yet, though, better get changing.