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I’ve always wondered about this specific issue. There is massive paperwork in hospitals and clinics. I’ve shadowed clinics where 200-300 pages of faxes, referrals, doctor notes, nurse notes, patient care instructions, etc are managed every hour and the HIPPA bins fill up in 2-3 days.
Having said all this, how does this relate to potential HIPAA complications? No doubt there are moments where a piece of paper with confidential information goes missing into someone’s hands.
Perhaps a resident takes a folder full of patient notes home for a research project and a few pages fall off on the subway. Or maybe the receptionist gives the “After visit summary” of one patient to another patient. Or the fax number is dialed wrong. Or the nurse puts her notes in her back pocket and it drops out of the pocket when she goes across the street to Starbucks. Or someone is moving boxes from one office to another office and some pages fall out. Or someone places a note in the trash can rather than the HIPAA bin and the notes falls out when the janitor picks up the trash can.
Am I overthinking it? Does this even happen often or is it a rare incident? Are violations like these investigated?
Interestingly enough I found something that relates to this issue:
www.reliasmedia.com
Having said all this, how does this relate to potential HIPAA complications? No doubt there are moments where a piece of paper with confidential information goes missing into someone’s hands.
Perhaps a resident takes a folder full of patient notes home for a research project and a few pages fall off on the subway. Or maybe the receptionist gives the “After visit summary” of one patient to another patient. Or the fax number is dialed wrong. Or the nurse puts her notes in her back pocket and it drops out of the pocket when she goes across the street to Starbucks. Or someone is moving boxes from one office to another office and some pages fall out. Or someone places a note in the trash can rather than the HIPAA bin and the notes falls out when the janitor picks up the trash can.
Am I overthinking it? Does this even happen often or is it a rare incident? Are violations like these investigated?
Interestingly enough I found something that relates to this issue:
Handwritten notes can be weak link in your compliance with HIPAA |…
With all the talk about encryption and other high-tech ways to safeguard protected health information (PHI), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations still can be traced to the simplest task: jotting down notes about a patient on a piece of paper.
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