Do you believe your healthcare information is always kept private? Unfortunately, it is not necessarily so.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) introduced some very significant privacy protections for your personal and healthcare information, which, in HIPAA vernacular, is called Protected Health Information, or PHI.

Among the protections that HIPAA covers is a set of requirements that allow your healthcare providers to share your PHI without authorization from you. They consist of all of the following situations:

1.) Uses and disclosures that are mandatory by law2.) Uses and disclosures that are for public health activities3.) Disclosures that are related to victims of abuse, neglect, or domestic violence4.) Uses and disclosures that are for health supervision activities5.) Disclosures that are for law enforcement purposes6.) Uses and disclosures that are for medical examiners and coroners 7.) Uses and disclosures that are for tissue, organ, or eye donation purposes8.) Uses and disclosures that are for research that involves minimal risk9.) Uses and disclosures that are made to prevent a serious threat to health or safety10.) Disclosures related to Workers Compensation

If your healthcare provider chooses to disclose your PHI for one of the above reasons, by law, they must document and account for the disclosure. Also, you have the right to receive that documentation so you will know to whom your healthcare provider has disclosed your PHI. By simply asking your healthcare provider for documentation of the disclosures, you can exercise that right any time you want. This information is very personal so you should take great care to know that your information is kept as confidential as possible.

However, compliance with proper documentation of disclosures can be spotty, at best. Oftentimes, healthcare staff and providers do not really understand how or why they should not disclose your PHI. So, some of them just do not properly account for such disclosures.

You may not necessarily know if your PHI has been disclosed as your authorization is not required for these disclosures, and health provider offices may not comply with the disclosure accounting rules.

You must also know that once your provider discloses your PHI, whether they account for the disclosure or not, whoever receives your PHI may or may not be required to comply with all HIPAA privacy rules.

For instance, Jackie Smith (named changed to protect the individual’s privacy) suffered a death in her family. Due to those circumstances, her deceased family member’s PHI was disclosed to law enforcement. Fortunately, the healthcare provider followed the HIPAA privacy rules and accounted for the disclosures. But then her family member’s PHI was released to the press, including the Social Security Number, date of birth, and diagnoses.

The way the information was leaked to the press is a subject for the courts. The point is that the confidential information was not protected once it was disclosed through the healthcare provider.

And you too should know that your healthcare information may not be safe once disclosed by your provider.

What steps can you follow to help ensure that you and your family’s protected healthcare information will really be protected and remain confidential?

First: if you or your family members are ever involved in any circumstance mentioned above, and your healthcare provider discloses your PHI, you must exercise your right for an account of the disclosure by your healthcare provider.

Next, if you do not receive any account in writing within 30 days, then file a complaint with your healthcare provider’s HIPAA Privacy Officer (all healthcare providers are required to have one). If necessary, file a complaint through the Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.

After that, check that you follow the chain of custody: who received the confidential information and what did they do with it. Ensure that each of your requests for this information are in writing and then follow-up with phone calls.

Finally, always remember to keep a log of your requests; one day you may need it.

The HIPAA privacy rules were created to maintain confidentiality of your protected health information whenever it is in your healthcare provider’s custody. Once the information is disclosed to other organizations that are not healthcare-related, it is no longer protected by HIPAA regulation. It is your job to keep track of your PHI and to ensure that the information is kept as confidential as possible.

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