HIPPA question

[DIJ]

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So, I had some confusion regarding HIPPA policy. Maybe someone could enlighten me here? I'm not sure I understand all the ins and outs.

If a pharmacist has a patient that is simultaneously seeing two doctors, and the patient withholds medical history from each of the two doctors regarding the other, is a pharmacist allowed to pass information between the doctors, in reference to doctor shopping or any other matter? Say, one doctors made advancements in the treatment/diagnosis of his patient, and the other is making strides in another area of the patients illness. Could you give a complete picture of the patients diagnosis/information to one of the doctors? I hope I typed that out well enough, it seems like a garbled mess, but thank you to whoever can clear this up for me.

 

[MountainPharmD]

So, I had some confusion regarding HIPPA policy. Maybe someone could enlighten me here? I'm not sure I understand all the ins and outs.

If a pharmacist has a patient that is simultaneously seeing two doctors, and the patient withholds medical history from each of the two doctors regarding the other, is a pharmacist allowed to pass information between the doctors, in reference to doctor shopping or any other matter?

Yes, you can.

 

[Quiksilver]

btw, its HIPAA

 

[crazybob]

wouldn't you need to be sure that you talked to the doctors at a private setting to be sure you were keeping confidentiality? sometimes on the phone you might have someone walk by and hear everything. and emails could be kinda risky, but safer in some ways.

 

[Garfield3d]

wouldn't you need to be sure that you talked to the doctors at a private setting to be sure you were keeping confidentiality? sometimes on the phone you might have someone walk by and hear everything. and emails could be kinda risky, but safer in some ways.

In the situations that you mentioned, those are not necessarily violations of HIPAA. The pharmacist needs to make an effort to safeguard the patient's information. So, in the scope of a telephone conversation, the pharmacist just needs to make the call from a private location, or if it's in a semi-public area, speak in a hushed tone or quieter volume. If the pharmacist was using a public telephone and speaking kinda loudly, then that's probably bad judgment and a violation. But, if he's trying to keep it down and someone is just eavesdropping, then that's possibly not a violation.

I'm not sure if there are special circumstances surrounding e-mails. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it and there's nothing off the top of my head, but I'm pretty green when it comes to experience.

--Garfield3d

 

[Old Timer]

There are exceptions to the rule. PHI may be disclosed w/o the patient's consent for the following reasons:

1. Payment of a claim
2. Treatment
3. Healthcare operations

So it appears your conversation with the physician falls under the treatment exception.

As for e-mail. I would only send PHI with an e-mail system that was encrypted. Simply by transmitting e-mail with a standard e-mail program, you are placing their PHI on someone's server (Yahoo, Comcast, etc) and this is a HIPAA violation.