HIPAA--Mixed up discharge papers

[JeanettePNP]

My husband was recently discharged from the hospital following a surgical procedure. I was looking over his discharge papers (after he got home) and realized that he had accidentally been given someone else's discharge papers.

His own papers were there, but the other guy's were somehow mixed in with them. Now I wonder whose papers the other guy has and what other mixups may have happened in this hospital.

Would you suggest letting the hospital know about the mixup? Or just quietly shredding those papers and forgetting about them?

[Sue Damonas, BSN]

Several years ago I got my credit card bill and wondered why the envelope was thicker than usual. I ended up not only getting my credit card bill but also 20 other people's bills. All with their credit card number and personal info on them. I called the credit card company and mailed them back immediately.

[April, RN, BSN, RN]

Honestly, no one was hurt by this mistake. If it were me, I would probably just give them a call and let them know it happened so they can be more careful in the future and then forget about it. Maybe the nurse printed your husband's discharge the same time someone else printed and he/she grabbed whatever was in the printer.

[TDCHIM]

Honestly, no one was hurt by this mistake. If it were me, I would probably just give them a call and let them know it happened so they can be more careful in the future and then forget about it. Maybe the nurse printed your husband's discharge the same time someone else printed and he/she grabbed whatever was in the printer.

Well, this time no one appears to have been harmed by the error, but what if the other person's paperwork had been given to a less-than-law-abiding third party? I definitely agree with you that contacting the hospital to notify is important. As another poster noted, the issue isn't really whether someone "gets in trouble" or not, it's about checking the process to see if something is causing an oddly high error rate. For instance, what if (unknown to this individual) there's been a sudden spike in such incidents? Maybe there's a computer issue that needs to be resolved. Several years ago, my former employer's computer system started randomly generating double- and triple-prints of certain documents; it took several visits from the IT contractor to get that one fixed!

So OP, my advice is to notify the hospital and do what the people there request (personally, I'd contact the health information management staff, but I'm biased). If the person you speak to doesn't seem to care, then shred the stuff and know you tried to help. :)

[JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP]

Called the hospital and left an anonymous message. Didn't mention any names so nobody will get into trouble. Up to them how to handle it. If it were up to me I'd just send out a staff email alerting them to double check papers before giving them out to patients.

As to the comments about blowing this out of proportion: If you think about it, most hipaa violations are relatively innocuous and nobody is harmed as a result. Is it really that terrible if I come home and mention to my spouse that Mr. Jones was in the hospital? But we're supposed to take patient privacy seriously. It's just a matter of taking an extra 2 seconds to make sure that nobody else's papers are mixed up in the pile. I don't think that's too much to ask.

[BluegrassRN]

Call the hospital, explain the situation, and ask what to do with the papers.

I recently discharged a patient to another facility. Apparently when the nurse went to look through the copied chart, other papers were in there. I don't know how they got there, as I did not put the chart together, but I appreciated that, rather than gripe about how terrible we were, the nurse gave me a courtesy phone call, letting me know what happened.

I wrote up an incident report and sent out an email letting our staff know what happened, and that we need to be much more careful in the future. I appreciated knowing the incident had occurred, so that we could evaluate the situation and improve.

[luvpets]

Regarding this, is it a HIPPA violation on the nurse that did the discharge? uugghh something like this just happened to me! I did a discharge for a patient and had the wrong patients name on the paperwork. There was no information on that other patient, just his name and those hospital codes. Not sure if I did a HIPPA violation or not. thanks

[rn/writer, RN]

Thank you for letting the hospital know there was a problem.

HIPAA violations can cost facilities many thousands of dollars. I'm sure they'd rather fix glitches than pay the fines.

It's scary how vulnerable we all are in this information age. Makes me want to move to a cave at times. One with no mailing address.

[Cul2]

I can't believe some of the advice I'm reading here. So much for protection of personal privacy. This was a clear example of a breach of security and compromise of personal information. Yes it was a mistake. Mistakes happen. I'm not suggesting that anyone should be fired, fined or go to jail.

At the very least, don't you think that the individual whose information was compromised should be notified? That's basic manners and respect.

At least as important, the hospital should know so they can figure out precisely what happened to cause this mistake and what to do to prevent it from happening again.

Some of the responses I'm reading here do not give me great confidence in the ethics within some members of the medical community. So much for those wonderful pamphlets hosptials produce about how patient privacy is being protected.

To the OP -- Use your common sense and follow your conscience. If it had been your information that had been compromised, what would you want the person who received it to do about it?

[belgarion]

My wife was discharged from the ER one night. The dialysis center had sent sent her there in a CYA move and we had been in a treatment room for about ten hours and saw her nurse twice, the doctor once. By the time they gave us the d/c paperwork we grabbed it and left. After we were home I was looking through the papers and found prescriptions for BP meds. This made no sense at all since the reason she was sent there was LOW blood pressure. A second look revealed that the prescriptions were for another pt. who was there at the same time. The sheet contained this person's address and phone number.

I called her and explained the situation. She and her husband came by and picked it up a little while later. She told me she was going to "raise holy hedoubleL" about this. I never heard what happened after that but we did get a letter from the hospital apologizing for the mistake and promising to take corrective action. Not entirely sure why they were apologizing to us but I guess CYA is the byword.

[xtxrn, ASN, RN]

I don't see this as someone getting in trouble, but a chance to make sure it doesn't happen again (or at least make people aware that it HAS happened). I'd let them know- not in some punitive way, but as a QA situation (and HIPAA). :)

[steph1315]

I am in total shock at some of the other comments as well. This just happened to me and I still have not contacted the hospital because not sure what to do but I am furious not to mention it could have been a bit more serious than me just getting someone else's papers. I got discharge papers from an urgernt care center and when I left I always look at my diagnosis....never reading the top of the paper because I know who I am, and all I see is Humon Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). My daughter is in the car with me so I tried to keep calm and put paper away til I could review it later. Well that later was that night so here I am upset thinking I have HIV and no one has ever mentioned that to me and how am I gonna tell my little girl? Well I go to pick up my prescriptions and apparently she was given similar prescriptions as me but hers were for high blood pressure which I do not have. I started feeling funny so I took a look at the discharge papers and read about the prescriptions I picked up and they had called her prescriptions in for me. If the nurse would have just verified my date of birth before giving me the sheet none of this would have taken place. I am not sure if I should contact the person this information belongs to or what I should do but I would be beside myself if I was her and she wanted no one to know of her diagnosis. As for the clinic I think the person should lose their job because that is normal procedure for HIPAA regardless of the diagnosis to verify who the person is matches the medical record. It was just one simple sheet of paper that I got and look what it caused not to mention what could have happened taking someone else prescriptions, especially beings im on Gabepentin already and you have to be very careful what medicines you mix with it. What's your thoughts on that?

[klone, MSN, RN]

I'd notify the hospital and ask them what they want to do with the paperwork.

It's not about good karma or bad, it's not about getting someone in trouble (or not). ANY breakdown in the system can be a teachable moment..

Absolutely this. It may be a one-time thing. But it may be a flaw in the system that needs to be finessed. They won't know unless someone brings it to their attention.