New to office... now I wonder if I have violated..

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Specializes in peds, allergy-asthma, ob/gyn office.

I work in OB/Gyn office. We had a patient who needed some time-sensitive bloodwork drawn. We'd actually already ordered it, and when results did not come in I called the lab, to find that she had not done the draw yet. My doc and I discussed, and she told me to contact the patient about it, to have it done now. This was a new patient. I tried calling her cell number, but it was not working. The only other number listed was a work number. I called there, and just said it was her doctor's office, and to please have her call us. They asked for the name of the doc, so I reluctantly gave the name and again, just our call back number.

I truly thought we had a non-working cell number. It turns out we must have had a cell outage in our area, because the next patient I needed to call, and had called several times before.... the number did not work either.:unsure:

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No you have not. Here's the reference.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

It is NOT a violation of HIPAA to call someone to say, "Hi, this is Oedgar, a nurse at Dr. Happy's office. Please call us back today as it's important, thank you."

Now, if you were to say, "Hi, this is Oedgar from your gynecologist Dr. Happy's office, I'm calling to find out why you didn't get your blood drawn for your HCG test, we need you to do this today, please call us as soon as you can, thanks" then you have entered HIPAA violation city.

Even with a cell phone, I will not leave a message with anything more than my name, location and number unless I have written confirmation from the patient that it is OK to leave a message at this number. And even then, I keep any PHI to a minimum and request that they call me back to talk in more detail.

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Specializes in peds, allergy-asthma, ob/gyn office.

Thank you both. I feel better about this. I had actually tried to research it, but nothing I saw mentioned leaving a message at the pt's work, only at home. And I kept it very minimal, did not even identify myself as the nurse. I just said, "This is Oedgar at Dr. Happy's office. I do not have a working cell phone number for this patient. Can you please have her call me at this number xxx-xxxx."

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

Patients may not always like us calling home/work/cells, but calling in itself isn't violating HIPAA--it's what we say that can violate it.

There was a thread here a while back where someone was miffed that the doctor's office left a message at home that her spouse heard and so asked her about it. There was no HIPAA violation; she was upset because she hadn't been forthcoming with hubby about seeing the doctor in the first place.

While I try to stay out of marital communication issues, I do tell patients that if they don't wish for me to call them at a certain number then don't list it.

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Our office has a page that the pt signs and checks yes or no to leave a message, and which number to try them at.

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