HIPAA Compliance – Is Patient Privacy Always The Best Answer?
Medical information is frequently accidentally leaked. Private data can be accessed by unathorized people through computers if a glitch occurs. Sometimes people leave files out for the curious to pick up. Seamingly small errors of judgement can result in a HIPAA privacy violation for hundreds, if not thousands of patients. This can be dreadful.
Even more appalling are the intentional information leaks. A big name is treated at a medical facility and one of the medical staff copies their file and sells it to a newspaper. In one particular instance, the daughter of a hospital employee took a list of patients’ information and called those people to tell them they had been diagnosed with HIV??”as a practical joke. Some of these stories make us shake our heads in disbelief.
The topic of privacy violations??”whether intentional or not??”raises an important question. Is there ever an instance that makes it ok be in violation of HIPAA rules? Is protecting patients privacy more important than anything else? Are there times when keeping a patients’ information private might cause them??”or others??”more harm than good?
Let’s address a few things first. The previous examples are plainly wrong on the part of the HIPAA violators and harmful to the victims??”psychologically, emotionally, and financially. There are times when it is obvious that HIPAA achieves its purposes in protecting patients. Using a persons health should never be used for personal financial gains. Also, no one should be giving out false information about a patient??”to him nor to anyone else. That is clear. However, what about the gray areas?
What about public safety? Is there ever a time when it is better for the safety and health of the public to disclose health information about an individual? Should illnesses that are highly contagious be disclosed to a patient’s school or workplace to protect those with whom the patient may come in contact? HIPAA protects the privacy of that patient but what about the safety and health of those around him? Certainly the health of those individuals are not any less important.
What about the patient’s own safety and well-being? Medical employees are often privy to a great deal of personal information. That information must be kept confidential according to HIPAA.
There is no straight forward answer to questions like these. While protecting patients information is important, we must consider whether or not there is a downside to so much privacy in certain situations.
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