The OCR guidance at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/privacy.html under incidental disclosures indicates that leaving information with family members or on an answering machine or mailing information is allowed, but also cautions that professional judgment should be used to assure that the information is limited to what is necessary and assure that its in the interests of the patient.
Regards, lhc Leah Hole-Curry, JD FOX Systems, Inc. 602.708.1045 Information transmitted is confidential and may be proprietary to FOX Systems, Inc. It is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed. Anyone else is prohibited from disclosing, copying, or disseminating the contents or attachments. If you receive this in error, please notify sender immediately, or us at www.foxsys.com and delete from your system. >>> "Doug Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/17/03 06:38 AM >>> An extension to this -- how do you handle answering machines? My gut feeling is that either a no-no (the machine more questionable than a family member) -- the information could only be released to the patient or his/her representative designated in a written authorizaton. Perhaps another signature on your main consent/authorization form to allow these types of communications is what's needed??? The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily the opinion of LCMH. Douglas M. Webb Computer System Engineer Little Company of Mary Hospital & Health Care Centers [EMAIL PROTECTED] "This electronic message may contain information that is confidential and/or legally privileged. It is intended only for the use of the individual(s) and entity(s) named as recipients in the message. If you are not an intended recipient of the message, please notify the sender immediately, delete the material from any computer, do not deliver, distribute, or copy this message, and do not disclose its contents or take action in reliance on the information it contains. Thank you." ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WEDI SNIP Privacy Workgroup List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 04:04 PM Subject: HIPAA privacy and telephone > I would like the lists opinion on this topic. > > Patient comes to the office to have their potassium checked because they are on a diuretic. Later, the physician's nurse calls the patient at home with results but the patient is not home. Spouse answers the phone. Can you tell the spouse that the potassium was fine and that he/she should tell the spouse to continue the same dose of diuretic and potassium supplement? If you say "no, this type of disclosure is not allowed", would it matter that we put a statment in our Notice of Privacy Practices that stated (in the section on Payment, treatment and health care operations) "On occasion, we call test results to your home and leave the results with a family member if you are not present". Now, obviously, we would not do this with a HIV result but it seems like such a waste of everyone's time to play phone tag to accommodate the one patient in a million that is actually upset because you told the spouse what the potassium result was. Thank you. > > Rich Fairley, > Dubuque, IA --- The WEDI SNIP listserv to which you are subscribed is not moderated. The discussions on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/. These listservs should not be used for commercial marketing purposes or discussion of specific vendor products and services. They also are not intended to be used as a forum for personal disagreements or unprofessional communication at any time. You are currently subscribed to wedi-privacy as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this list, go to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org or send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need to unsubscribe but your current email address is not the same as the address subscribed to the list, please use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org --- The WEDI SNIP listserv to which you are subscribed is not moderated. The discussions on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/. These listservs should not be used for commercial marketing purposes or discussion of specific vendor products and services. They also are not intended to be used as a forum for personal disagreements or unprofessional communication at any time. You are currently subscribed to wedi-privacy as: archive@mail-archive.com To unsubscribe from this list, go to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org or send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need to unsubscribe but your current email address is not the same as the address subscribed to the list, please use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org
