HIPAA rules & jobshadowing?

[122794]

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Hi everyone. I'm about to job shadow a pharmacist soon for a few days at a large retail chain. However, he wanted me to familarize myself with HIPAA rules as it seems my knowledge wasn't enough. He told me to know who is affected by HIPAA rules, what constitutes patient information, and who has the right to access this information.

Can anyone give me a quick overview of this? I understand that HIPAA affects everyone (all healthcare organizations) including patients AND healthcare professionals. My understanding is that "patient information" is pretty much anything that is sent (electronically) back and forth through healthcare providers, insurance companies, pharmacies, etc.

Is it true that normally, the healthcare companies have access to a patients' medical information if they are assessing them like determining what kind of insurance they would be suitable for. However, the patient has access to their protected health information if they ever needed it. Is this correct? Or am I missing something? What other information should I know, do you think?

Thanks.

 

[jyw003]

Cool. This is what i think about HIPPA. Though the pharm students and pharmacist should correct me if I am wrong =].

I think if you are shadowing you won't have to worry about applying the HIPPA rules but you'll see that the pharm techs and pharmacist will be passively using the HIPPA law like nothing. HIPPA basically wants to protect privacy for all their patients by making sure in all processes from printing the label for the prescription to verifying name and address and giving it to the patient will be only seen by medical personnel. So when the label prints from the machine it will say the name. The name can not be left on the counter where any customer walking by can see it. Next the pharm tech or pharmacist will get the drug and fill. After it has been filled, the bottle is then verified by the pharmacist to see if the label is correct. Once that is correct, the medication gets into the bag and is put into alphabetical order. When the pharmacist/pharm tech/clerk is retrieving the presciption, they must verify that the person picking up is the correct person. So in terms, this will prevent people from gaining information regarding drug prescription of a particular person.

Heres an example. Say person A is prescribed viagra and person B is prescribed lipitor. If person A's viagra is accidentally switched with person B's lipiptor then now person A knows that person B takes lipitor and person B knows person A takes viagra. This is just one example...I am sure there are a lot more.

 

[AsianGuy26]

HIPPA applies to more than just pharmacy as you guys have stated... the pharmacist// and also when u start taking pharm classes will have u go through a 3-hour hippa basic certification to make sure u know it.

Don't worry its easy... had to do it for my school and my job.

**HIPPA example... always refer to someone as patient (&&(_# outside

 

[Sparda29]

HIPAA basically affects all of the health field. When I went to shadow a doctor, I had to go down to HR and sign some HIPAA forms.