Questions tagged [hipaa]

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a United States statute that mandates privacy and security protocols for personal medical information.

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Authorizing Assistants for Medical Work

I have an assistant who handles nearly all scheduling and administration for me, personal and work. We sometimes run into trouble when a new medical/dental office says, "I'm sorry, I can't talk ...
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What is the most comparable American law to GDPR right to subject access? Privacy Act?

HIPAA seems comparable but only applies to medical data, but is there anything more general than that? How does privacy act compare to data subject access rights under gdpr? Is it that it only applies ...
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What does HIPAA say about a third party reviewing protected health information and related records? [closed]

Suppose that in a US county the County Board of Commissioners wants to engage a retired physician to look into the county ambulance dispatch system to see what it takes to create proper records and ...
2 votes
2 answers
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Is self-reported wellness covered by HIPPA?

Suppose that a developer creates a website where people can enter daily information on how they feel (energy, back pain, mood, etc.). A person's information would be available to his or her ...
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Is an official patient/physician relationship required for HIPAA to apply?

Inspired by a tweet I saw a moment ago: https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1511783399580581888 She's a nurse and not only do I know that her sister in law N**** is coming in from out of town, she ...
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If a minor requested a doctor prescribe her birth control, can she demand the doctor not disclose her request to her parents?

Let's say a 16 year old girl manages to speak to her doctor in private during a regular appointment and requests birth control. She is afraid her parents would respond poorly to knowing she is ...
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1 answer
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Qualifying Life Event changes in Employer Sponsored Health Insurance

Is my understanding correct that HIPAA in the US defines the concept of Qualifying Life Events as a means to ensure employer sponsored health programs provide a Special Enrollment Period upon being ...
-1 votes
1 answer
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Does HIPAA apply to telecom equipment vendors or telecom services?

Some time ago, while filling a prescription at a pharmacy in a chain store, I was asked if I wanted to receive text messages when my medication would be ready. I agreed. Now, whenever my order is ...
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8 votes
1 answer
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Does HIPAA apply to individuals?

Does HIPAA privacy protection apply to an individual who has no relation to the healthcare field? For example, my neighbor drops his prescription pill bottle on the sidewalk outside his house. I pick ...
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Decrypt information for internal technical purposes in a HIPAA compliant way

Consider a scenario where a company operates a service which is HIPAA compliant. This service requires storing patient emails which may contain PIIs. These PPIs are redacted and encrypted when the ...
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What are a business's obligations now that the Biden (OSHA) administration has suspended enforcement of its business vaccination mandate(s)?

The Biden administration has suspended enforcement of its vaccination and testing requirements for private businesses after a federal appeals court halted the rules pending review. The Occupational ...
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Do parents have access to an adult child's childhood medical records

After my child turns 18, I know I am blocked from seeing any new medical records, unless they give explicit permission. However, does that mean I am blocked from their pediatric medical records? ...
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1 answer
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Is it a HIPAA violation to use a personal email to set up a medical billing account at work?

This question from the workplace stackexchange asks: I recently resigned from my job ... in NY ... Now I am being asked to tell them all my usernames and passwords for websites I used for my job as a ...
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3 votes
2 answers
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Can an employer ask an employee about personal health matters (HIPAA) and COBRA decision in public?

Hypothetical Scenario (in the US): Susan's employer, MoneySavers, offers COBRA to employees who separate from the company. Susan has given her two weeks' notice (she has quit her job) and will soon ...
2 votes
1 answer
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Do NYS healthcare providers have a legal time limit to get your medical test results to you?

United States (New York state) here. My wife got some bloodwork done at her doctor's office a few weeks ago, and she confirmed last Monday (2/2/21) with their office that the results were back, but ...
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Hipaa - doctor shared my medical information with everyone at religious facility

I went to the emergency room in March thinking I had Covid-19 and since I am young and healthy the doctors labeled me as having a panic attack and assumed I was on something and so they drew blood for ...
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Does a foreign company need to be HIPAA compliant to work with a covered entity?

If I'm a HIPAA covered entity and I want to work with a foreign company (e.g. the foreign company would provide the covered entity with PHI from US and other people), does that foreign company also ...
2 votes
1 answer
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Are healthcare service employees required to notify anybody (in general or particular) of a HIPAA violation?

I was notified by one of our patients that they received a "Summary of Today's Visit" in the mail, however, it wasn't their own "Summary of Today's Visit", it was that of another patient. Knowing ...
0 votes
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Does PHI need to contain health information PLUS one of the 18 identifiers?

I've worked for various healthcare companies and found there's a wide range of interpretation to what protected HIPAA data is. It should be more cut and dry, but in actual practice it seems to be a ...
user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
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Are documents generated by the patient part of psychotherapy notes under HIPAA?

HIPAA defines psychotherapy notes as follows (emphasis added): Psychotherapy notes means notes recorded (in any medium) by a health care provider who is a mental health professional documenting or ...
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2 answers
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Is it a violation of HIPAA to say that a baby was born?

If a medical worker tells someone the first name of a child born at a hospital on that day, is that a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ? Does it make a ...
1 vote
1 answer
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HIPAA user names and emails in logs

We are developing software and interested in the following matter: Is having email addresses and usernames of our users in file logs a HIPAA violation or not? NOTE: 1. We are not going to store ...
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1 answer
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Is it a HIPAA violation for a dentist office to print a patient's password on paperwork?

Dentist office just printed my password (to their portal) on their paperwork. Surely this is a HIPAA violation (or against best practices, HIPAA or otherwise). Can anyone confirm if so and point me ...
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United States HIPAA and New Zealand HISO from outside these countries

We are developing a software product for storing and managing health records in Australia, with the software product primarily targeted towards Australian healthcare organisations. This requires us to ...
2 votes
1 answer
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Concealing Medical Conditions from Employer

If an employer asks an employee or prospective employee to fill out and sign a health declaration form (very common in the medical field) like this. If the employee is afraid that revealing their ...
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Is personal check data PHI if used to pay a covered entity?

Is the information on a personal check such as a name, address and phone number considered personally identifiable health information or PHI if paid to a covered entity?
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2 answers
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My rights as a Patient [duplicate]

Hello: I have never had an issue with obtaining any test result from any lab or imaging facility until now. My doctor ordered x-rays to be taken in his office on 1/24/19. The only appointment ...
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1 answer
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Insurance Company sending possible PHI to the wrong mailing address

I'm wondering if sending snail mail to the wrong address could ever be a violation of HIPAA? Obviously, due to people moving and not updating their account information, this likely happens all the ...
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Licensing - can any intangible thing of value to which an individual holds exclusive rights be licensed?

Provided an intangible thing is of value and an individual holds the exclusive rights to that thing of value, is there any limitation to what can and cannot be licensed? Can an individual license ...
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Do the HIPAA regulations in the United States prevent medical providers from disclosing relevant health information on patient A to patient B?

If a medical provider is aware of some health information on patient A that can affect patient B, do the HIPAA regulations still prevent the medical provider from conveying that information to patient ...
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Does HiPAA allow for the use of cloud services to store encrypted backups?

Considering a service allows for the communication of PHI without persistent storage. If the user takes responsibility for storing their own data, and they choose to store it in their google cloud ...
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

Why aren't post-mortem records protected by HIPAA?

Looking at the question Why are toxicology reports made public? and the answer provided, I have to wonder why aren't such records (autopsy results, toxicology reports, etc.) covered by HIPAA? ...
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Allergies, Sudafed, HIPAA, a prescription, and the logbook/databse

A few years ago I learned about the Sudafed logbook-that-is-implemented-as-a-database. I had to do my own research about it because the person at the Walmart pharmacy didn't know anything and ...
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Does HIPAA prevent doctors from sharing statistics?

In the US, where HIPAA prevents doctors from disclosing patient information, can a doctor disclose information about his patients in general, since he's not disclosing information about any specific ...
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2 votes
1 answer
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Does HIPAA apply to independent doctor with no links to Medicare or other medical organization?

When I spoke with my family doctor he was under the impression that HIPAA privacy rules applied to EVERY doctor or health care provider. Also a professor who teaches classes for emergency medical ...
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38 votes
2 answers
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How is it legal for a hospital to put two patients together in the same room in the US?

In the United States we have HIPAA regulations in place to (among other things) prevent healthcare providers, insurance providers, and any other entity that handles medical information from leaking ...
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1 answer
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Picture of a receipt from a Doctor

I had to go several rounds with a doctor's office about them not taking my insurance and them assuring me that the copay would be a certain amount. They then charged me 20x the quoted amount. I didn't ...
4 votes
1 answer
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For HIPAA, Does US Patient Data Have To Stay On US Servers?

For an application that stores US patient data, does HIPAA require that US data stays on US servers?
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Can a software contractor be indemnified against HIPAA?

I'm an independent developer. My client's app manages PHI for US based patient, which means HIPAA rules apply. From what I understand, HIPAA sees my client's company is the covered entity, and I am a ...
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Does the 2013 HIPAA Omnibus apply to employees of subcontractors?

From the 2013 HIPAA Omnibus: that a business associate includes a “subcontractor that creates, receives, maintains, or transmits protected health information on behalf of the business associate.” .....
2 votes
1 answer
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HIPAA within context of marriage

I am finding out that my ex-wife may have kept from me a genetic predisposition to Down syndrome and other abnormalities in the baby. The physician did not tell me about this either. I want to know ...
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Does HIPAA require a secondary physician to share results with your primary?

NY state here. If I go to get a second opinion from a physician other than my primary, are there any regulations (HIPAA or otherwise) that require that 2nd physician to share consultation notes/lab ...
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