HIPAA Question

[StephBee]

So I'm currently on Peds and we had a patient come in and was in our ward for a couple days before needed to be transferred to the PICU. I was on their care team for those couple of days

Am I allowed to check up on her current status in the PICU if she's still hospitalized for the same condition I saw her for? I'm not on his/her care team any more since he/she was moved and I"m only on in-patient (I won't be on PICU for a couple of weeks).

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[ChrisGriffen]

It probably violates hipaa, but you can just ask someone and they will tell you the status of the patient.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

It depends. You need to find out your specific hospital policies. At my med school once you had an established relationship with the patient it was permitted to follow them for educational purposes. My residency has more strict policies.

 

[evilbooyaa]

I'm not sure, but I believe that you are no longer taking care of the patient, and thus you have no reason to have access to their records.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Technically the information should be accessed only to provide ongoing care for the patient, which it doesn't sound like you're doing. You're better off asking your attending or a classmate on the PICU service for more information (and best to frame it as a learning point rather than just curious),

 

[Raryn]

Unless this patient is one of Barack Obama's children, it's highly unlikely anyone would ever blink twice at this. I routinely make lists of all of the patients I see on certain rotations and check up on the more interesting ones to see if there were any developments in the case. At this point, some of the ones I'm looking at were patients I treated 6 months or more ago. Every single inpatient rotation I'm on I make a list of the patients I still had at the end of it and check up later to see how the remainder of their hospitalization went, primarily to assist in my own education (and part of that is curiosity, yes).

Several of my co-students (when I was in med school) and co-residents (now) do similar things. Never have any of us gotten in any sort of trouble. The things that get you in trouble are looking at records of people who made the news, celebrities, and any employees of the hospital. That last one (hospital employees that you aren't treating) is a good way to get in HUGE trouble.