Is Compliance With HIPAA Always Safe For Patients?
There are many tales of mistaken leaks of medical info. Private data can be accessed by unathorized people through computers if a glitch occurs. Sometimes a file is left out and picked up by a curious passerby. One of these, or other simple errors can lead to a HIPAA privacy violation for many patients. This can be terrible.
Intentional leaks of private information are even worse. A celebrity is treated at a hospital and one of the medical staff copies their records and sells it to a gosip magazine. 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 are disappointing to say the least.
An important question is raised when it comes to privacy violations, whether it’s unintentional or not. Is it ever okay to violate the rules of HIPAA? Is there ever a time when there is something more important than protecting a patient’s privacy? Could there ever be an instance where harm could be caused to the patient or someone else if their info was kept private?
Let’s address a few things first. The examples given are undoubtedly unethical and harmful to the victims in several ways. There are times when it is obvious that HIPAA achieves its purposes in protecting patients. Personal financial gains should never be the result of exploiting someones medical information. In addition, spreading inaccurate information about someones health should never be done by anyone. That is clear. But what about some situations that may lie in the gray area?
How about for the safety of the public? 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? Due to HIPAA, you are required to protect that persons privacy, but what about the health of others that could be negativly affected by being around them? Certainly the health of those individuals are not any less important.
Medical employees have access to a large amount of personal data. That data must be kept confidential according to HIPAA.
These are difficult questions to answer. But in a world that has become so obsessed with safeguarding the privacy of the individual, maybe it is time to stop and ask ourselves “Is there a downside to so much privacy?”
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