Protecting Patient Information (HIPAA)
What
is HIPAA?
On
Monday, April 14th, 2003, the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) became effective. Basically, HIPAA
is a federal law regarding privacy of medical information and
is meant to protect the privacy of people’s medical information.
It contains specific guidelines as to how medical institutions
may use patients’ medical information. This law affects all medical
institutions from hospitals to pharmacies to clinician offices.
As
physicians have always been trained to closely safeguard a patient’s
information as confidential, this new law does not really alter
how your physician uses your information. Your information will
still be used for treatment purposes just as it always has been.
For example, if you need to see a specialist, your physician will
still be able to call that specialist and give your pertinent
information to help you get the most informative consultation
without needing any specific authorization from you. Likewise,
that specialist could later call your physician back to give additional
pertinent information about your course of treatment. Additionally,
if your physician orders a CAT scan, he/she will still be able
to call the hospital to get the result without your authorization.
HIPAA
does create a national standard for privacy of medical information
that will now be the same throughout the United States. It clearly
states that patients have access to their medical records and
ensures that patients need to give authorization before people
outside the given medical institution (researchers doing chart
reviews, etc) may have access to their medical or demographic
information. (Health departments still have access to records
for the diseases which physicians are required by law to report).
Additionally, HIPAA states that it is the physician office’s responsibility
to inform patients of their right to privacy of medical information.
Practically,
what does all this mean? …… forms.
Patients will begin receiving notifications in the mail or at
their next doctor’s appointments describing these privacy rights.
Additionally, some physician offices may decide to utilize more
extensive authorization forms more frequently. Everyone should
expect to sign more types of authorization forms when they see
their physician. As with anything new, confusion exists initially.
Therefore, until all medical personnel across the country are
fully aware of how HIPAA practically affects them, there will
be misinformation. This confusion over misinformation will likely
affect patients in the form of delays of release of medical information
in various scenarios as one institution states a signed authorization
is needed, but another states it is not. Hopefully, implementation
will proceed smoothly.
We
at Family Physicians of Arlington will continue to take the confidentiality
of our patients’ medical information very seriously and strive
to conform to all aspects of this law in a manner that does not
overburden nor jeopardize our patients.
