University Times

“HIPAA hysteria” has run rampant since the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, aimed at protecting patients’ privacy, took effect last April:

• Without prior permission from patients, hospitals, nursing homes and pharmacies often are refusing to provide patient information over the telephone to anyone — and sometimes only to a select (and varying) few family members who visit in person.
• Some florists have been told they can’t put patients’ names on flowers for delivery to hospital rooms.
• Doctors have re-designed their front-desk sign-in sheets to avoid unintentionally disclosing patient information.
• Some professional sports teams are refusing to release information on players’ injuries.
• Police departments, in some cases, are no longer releasing once-public medical information about crime and accident victims.

“The basic premise of HIPAA,” said Randy Juhl, Pitt vice chancellor for research conduct and compliance, “is that information about your health is your information, and the keepers of that information — be they hospitals or clinical researchers — are required to follow HIPAA guidelines on how they can treat your health information and share it, if they can share it, with others.”

As the examples indicate, institutions are going to extremes to avoid possible HIPAA violations, to the point that the feds have created web sites and other information sources aimed at dispelling rumors such as: HIPAA forbids announcing patient names over a hospital’s public announcement system. Actually, HIPAA does not prohibit “common and important health care practices; nor does it specify the specific measures that must be applied to protect an individual’s privacy while engaged in these practices,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ web site.

However, HHS recommends limiting the information disclosed over public announcement systems and referring patients to a reception desk where they can receive further instructions in a more confidential manner.

For answers to other HIPAA questions (such as: Does HIPAA allow parents the right to see their children’s medical records?) see the HHS site at: http://answers.hhs.gov.

For information on how HIPAA impacts research at Pitt — including answers to frequently asked questions, memoranda from Pitt Health Sciences and UPMC officials, and HIPAA forms and documents — see the Pitt Institutional Review Board site: http://www.irb.pitt.edu/hipaa.
—Bruce Steele