HIPAA question...

[crossurfingers]

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A mother comes into the pharmacy with an unlabeled box of random pills and says, "I found these in my daughter's room. Can you tell me what they are?" Upon further questioning she tells you the daughter is over 18. Would you identify those pills knowing the woman will tie them to her daughter or would you refuse?

 

[museabuse]

A mother comes into the pharmacy with an unlabeled box of random pills and says, "I found these in my daughter's room. Can you tell me what they are?" Upon further questioning she tells you the daughter is over 18. Would you identify those pills knowing the woman will tie them to her daughter or would you refuse?

At that point I would probably tell them to call poison control. I'll verify meds for people over phone and in person but if I am too busy or not sure if I should then I just tell them to call poison control.

 

[PumpkinSmasher]

It is up to you. She could always jump online and verify them herself with an online pill identifier. I would inform her of online pill identifiers or contact the poison control. She can do her own snooping.

 

[Praziquantel86]

I wouldn't do it, regardless of whether the mother could easily find that information online.

 

[Old Timer]

This is NOT a HIPAA violation. HIPAA has nothing to do with this. If you identify pills for people why would you not do this?

 

[MountainPharmD]

A mother comes into the pharmacy with an unlabeled box of random pills and says, "I found these in my daughter's room. Can you tell me what they are?" Upon further questioning she tells you the daughter is over 18. Would you identify those pills knowing the woman will tie them to her daughter or would you refuse?

I will identify pills only for medications that were filled at my pharmacy. For example Grandma's 7-day pill organizer fell over and everything got mixed up.

I provide more than enough free services. In this case I would tell the mother we do not do that and give her the number for poison control.

 

[PumpkinSmasher]

I will identify pills only for medications that were filled at my pharmacy. For example Grandma's 7-day pill organizer fell over and everything got mixed up.

Crazy ole Granny...

 

[HaleyRX]

I agree--there is enough free stuff going on from pharmacists to do this. We had an elderly man the other day who has decided to take a college business class out of boredom..so he wants to write a paper about how a pharmacy works, and spent 45 minutes talking to the pharmacist (I work at CVS) about pharmacy..he wasn't one of our patients, we haven't seen him since.
My pharmacist is too busy to identify pills via phone (we get 4 or 5 of these calls a day) and I dont even know if I can legally do that? so I just always say "because of the liability, we do not identify medications. I can give you the number to poision control center." and then they say "well walgreens does this all the time for me, I always find pills everywhere and they help me" and I say "well.." *pause* "I don't take that chance"
These calls never come from customers...just people who google CVS and call us...

 

[Old Timer]

I really don't like to identify anything that I can't see for myself....

 

[crossurfingers]

I really don't like to identify anything that I can't see for myself....

The mother brought in the physical pills in a box for you to identify. It turned out to be a mix of antidepressants and narcotic pain meds (although I did not tell this to the mother). Mother told me she needed to know what they were so she could report it to Child Protective Services as evidence to why she should have custody of her grandchild instead. I just kept picturing the daughter finding out her mother found out her meds from me and then suing for giving that info out and getting her child taken away from her. So alas, I did not do it.

Oldtimer, you say identifying the pills would not be a HIPAA violation. If the lady told me she was cleaning and found these pills laying around, I can understand it not violating HIPAA, but if she specifically links these as another person's belongings wouldn't that be giving away private health information?

 

[Sparda29]

We had an incident at my pharmacy couple years ago when some parents called us up and asked that they found Niacin tablets in their son's room, and wanted to find out what Niacin was used for. So I printed out a monograph and explained it briefly to them. So they tell me that he used to abuse illegal drugs in the past (when I finally got to the part of Niacin being used sometimes to conceal drug use from the drug test). I heard them pretty much freak out on him over the phone, and then he came in pissed off a week later about how we shouldn't have told them that information.

 

[Apteka]

"Oldtimer, you say identifying the pills would not be a HIPAA violation. If the lady told me she was cleaning and found these pills laying around, I can understand it not violating HIPAA, but if she specifically links these as another person's belongings wouldn't that be giving away private health information? "

I agree... if this were a written prescription (illegible or difficult to read) that belonged to her (over 18 year old) daughter, then it wouldn't be my place to tell the MOM what the daughter's RX said. So, I don't see the difference. Identifying pills that belong to a daughter is pretty much the same thing, in my book.


If the mom clearly said that these meds were her daughter's, then I wouldn't do the pill identification for her. Of course, if she were SUPER insistent, I'd send her to our ol' friend google and let her do it herself.

crossurfingers: I'd have done the SAME thing you did! 🙂

 

[Old Timer]

HIPAA protects information that you have. The only way it's a HIPAA violation is if the daughter is your patient. If NOT, it's not a HIPAA violation. Otherwise you couldn't answer any general question about anything.

Also, I would like to do a genetic test on pharmacists. They are the least likely to be sued and the most afraid of being sued. There must be some genetic component.

 

[npage148]

I do it and long as I verify that the person is not a patient (no HIPAA to worry about). Who cares, they will find out one way or another

 

[Jeddevil]

A lady brought me 2 little purple pills the other day. She asked me what they were. She had found them in her sons backpack. I picked one up, read it and immediately told her, 'these are grape sweet-tarts'. She questioned me on it until I showed her on the side where it said 'sweet tarts'. Best stupid question of the day. I should have just popped one in my mouth and ate it before telling her anything.

 

[Enedium]

I should have just popped one in my mouth and ate it before telling her anything.

Until you later realized that he was using them to distribute LSD.