hippa and criminal trials

[oramar]

I understand pretty well how hippa works in a clinical situation. However, I admit I hadn't read all the rules. I am listening to details of a local murder trial in which the accused was injured by the police and spent a good deal of time in the hospital as result of the inury. All his caretakers, including student nurses have been called in to testify about his statements to them, some of them incriminating. I guess it makes sense that hippa is suspended under these circumstances.

[elkpark]

There was an interesting article in one of the nursing journals a couple of years ago about HIPAA. At the time it was written, not a single hospital had ever been prosecuted or otherwise sanctioned for violations. The only cases in which it had been enforced by the government was in the case of two people who stole credit card information from patient records. Any effect that HIPAA has had is through self-policing.

Yes, but how much of that self-policing is the result of hospitals and other facilities being afraid of having to deal with the Feds? I believe that it has a powerful effect in that sense. If the Federal law wasn't there, how serious would facilities be about protecting people's private info?

[Freedom42]

You're exactly right. It's entirely based on self-policing by institutions. Hospitals fire employees rather than incur prosecution.

[lamazeteacher]

You're exactly right. It's entirely based on self-policing by institutions. Hospitals fire employees rather than incur prosecution.

I'd rather believe that nurses and others who work in hospitals, agencies, etc. wherein it's important to guard personal information, have enough professionalism to keep patient info private. Now, with patients' personal and financial information available to anyone who can operate a computer, legal recourse is necessary to put teeth in what has up until now been up to an individuals' integrity, to avoid misuse of that.

Brian began a thread today regarding "smart pill containers" that record the compliance of patients taking the medicine prescribed by their doctor, as long as they swallow a "chip" that provides a connection, and can provide information about levels of the medicine in that individual's body. Can't you just see insurance companies refusing to cover anyone they deem "noncompliant", based on that information, which they might obtain by hacking into it, or get from someone who works in doctors' offices? Not in my world!