During the ACEP Scientific Assembly, Emergency Physicians Monthly did a bunch of video interviews with some well-known names in emergency medicine.
Click on the links to watch …
Lynn Massingale, executive chairman of TeamHealth, discuss health care reform
Greg Henry, past president of ACEP, discuss health care reform
Michael Frank, general counsel for Emergency Medicine Physicians, discuss risk management
Tom Scaletta, past president of AAEM, talk about smarter ED management
More interviews are being posted regularly, so check out Emergency Physician Monthly’s home page for updates.
 EP Monthly Interviews3 Responses to “EP Monthly Interviews”Leave a Reply |
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This is quite obviously off topic, but I know you and several lawyers read the comments regularly.
The question pertains to blogging on patients and what exactly constitutes a HIPAA violation.
“Patient has two 5 cm lacerations on the left buttocks, claims he fell from his ladder onto his clipping shears. Twice.” was his facebook status.
I know this guy works at five different urgent cares and the date he posts does not correlate with the date he sees the patient. He usually changes minor details, age, sex, and gender; but if the patient were to read this, odds are he would recognize himself.
My med school is in an uproar. Is this a Hipaa violation?
I wish I had a buck for every time someone in a position of authority alleged a violation of a law they knew next to nothing about.
Two issues:
1. HIPAA statute. If information has been de-identified, it is NOT a HIPAA violation to disclose it.
Sec. 164.514(a) Standard: de-identification of protected health information. Health information that does not identify an individual and with respect to which there is no reasonable basis to believe that the information can be used to identify an individual is not individually identifiable health information.
Sec. 164.502(d)(2) Uses and disclosures of de-identified information. Health information that meets the standard and implementation specifications for de-identification under Sec. 164.514(a) and (b) is considered not to be individually identifiable health information, i.e., de-identified. The requirements of this subpart do not apply to information that has been de-identified ….
2. Hospital Policy
Hospitals or even medical schools can create policies that are more strict than HIPAA laws. Hospital policy may state that no patient information – de-identified or not – can be used/transmitted/etc. Even if you comply with the law, you can still run afoul of hospital policy.
If he is changing details of the incidents, then why is everyone upset? Is telling stories over a beer soon going to cause an uproar, too?
Maybe medical students should be banned from hospitals – after all, where does HIPAA say it’s OK for medical students to look at patient charts? They’re not providing care. They’re not even licensed providers.
Run that scenario by your dean and watch him/her stutter.
Whatever happened to the age old informal debrief that is the telling of war stories over a beer or two? Or a cup of tea in the staff room? That is way different to going to, say, the shops, running into an acquaintance and saying “you know so & so – well, they were in the ED the other night getting a rather nasty cut stitched that happened when he dove off the wardrobe onto the waterbed and missed by that much! Oh yeah, and it wasn’t Mrs so & so he was with!”
Or releasing VERY confidential pt info to a local organisation in order to further a private agenda (it happened, and the nurse was disciplined and is no longer registered).
We also have the Privacy/Confidentiality laws here in Aus, they vary from state-state. We have gotten so darn sensitive about them, though, and IMHO Joe Public also misinterprets them at times as well – ” I want to complain about the staff over there talking about me and my details” usually during handover!
Yes, we now have a patient information pamphlet given to all patients and relatives explaining the handover process.
My point is that it is through the anectdotal discussions of interesting cases, really bad cases, unusual once in a lifetime cases, and yes, the funny cases that we health professionals learn, and hopefully also debrief enough to stay sane, whilst not violating the confidentiality/privacy stuff.
I’m with you WC, please keep telling your stories. I have no idea of who you are referring to and, given my geographical challenge by being on the underside of the world, I am very unlikely to be able to identify anyone!