Possible termination for HIPAA violations

Isabelle49 · Sep 23, 2011

Best to just be completely up front with your manager and HR. You are a new nurse and still in high learning and interest mode. Your curiosity could be seen as a desire to want to know more about different disease processes, not necessarily about the patient who is ill.

I will pray for you. I hope things work out. Please keep us posted. Bless you.

Sparrowhawk · Sep 23, 2011

Hon, I'm sorry this happened to you...hopefully they'll go light cause you're new and honestly didn't know (besides the fact that before I was even a nurse I knew not to look into things that weren't my patients, so it's bit hard to understand unless you were in LTC..then techincally you're taking care of all of them..anyway) You learned your lesson, I highly doubt you'll loose your license..it'll be okay.

Magnolia619 · Sep 23, 2011

Thanks for the blessings, prayers, and insight. I honestly believe I'm a great nurse, I pay attention to fall precautions, I vigorously wipe hubs with alcohol wipes, I make sure not to bring any info home and don't even talk to to my husband about my days... I recount insulin twice, and draw up medications to exact amounts. Etc etc I am always looking for a learning experience. Just didn't expect one in this way.

Is it worth calling and getting insurance with NSO at this point? Who is NSO?

Thanks again

EricJRN, MSN, RN · Sep 23, 2011

Nurses Service Organization (NSO) is a malpractice insurance company. They are probably by far the largest malpractice insurer of US nurses, and I know they also provide some form of legal consultation for their policyholders.

I doubt that any insurance company that would provide benefits to you for an incident that went down before you were insured. You might consult with an attorney, particularly if it escalates beyond an employment issue and a complaint ends up before your board of nursing.

tyvin, BSN, RN · Sep 23, 2011

I would think that your school would have covered this very important subject. I just hope that everyone reading this thread is learning that you simply don't access other peoples health information unless you are doing direct care.

Also; I am so very sorry that this happened to you. You must have accessed an awful lot of charts to have been fired. None the less you now know and I hope it all works out for you. How awful ... are you keeping in contact and fighting for yourself? Do you have an advocate inside like the DON?

DookieMeisterRN · Sep 23, 2011

I would contact your facilities EAP and talk with someone who can listen unbiased and help you sort through your feelings. I know you are feeling beat up so I will not repeat what others have said.

I reported a HIPAA violation that was very serious in nature and was relieved to find out, that termination was not given as punishment, when it definitely could have been.

Hopefully things will work out for you, I'm sorry but I think it would be difficult for anyone to tell you what happens next since every situation can be so different.

Nccity2002, MSN, RN · Sep 23, 2011

I am a young nurse that has only been practicing for 1 1/2 years. I love my job as a nurse, and I just got my dream job at a hospital I have always wanted to work at. I have been there for 4 months and I was called into HR for a meeting. They asked me why my name was on patients computer charts that I did not take care of. They informed me that was a HIPAA violation. I was completely devastated as I thought HIPAA violations were more like wrongly giving information out, obtaining info to use against someone, or copying information and taking it with you. Those kind of things were what I thought of when I thought of HIPAA. I didn't look at charts to find someone I knew or anything like that. I am a night nurse and I would just browse during downtime. I couldn't tell anyone the first thing about what was going on with any of the patients. I was just ignorant and didn't realize that I was violating something. They are talking about termination. What can I do to learn from this? To save my name? To save my license? What happens after termination, if that's what they decide.
Thanks for your time,
Desperately needing guidance,
J

Magnolia (and everyone who is beating on the poor girl)...what is done, is done. You learn from your mistakes and move on. In CA an HIPPA violation is not a BRN reportable offense. I honestly do not think your employer will have the time and energy to report you to any federal bureau, but as others had mentioned, be prepare for the worse case escenario (being fired). Understandably, it's a very stressful time in your life...but remember what does not kill you, make you stronger.

Hang in there...we are sending a player your way.

:hug::hug::hug:

nerdtonurse?, BSN, RN · Sep 23, 2011

Okay, everybody take a deep breath. Nobody's been fired, nobody's been reported to the BON, we're not sending anyone to a deserted island to languish their life in penance. Magnolia made a mistake, and everybody makes mistakes. Nobody died.

Magnolia, I truly hope the best for you, and perhaps when you're discussing this with the boss/HR, you could suggest that you tell your story to newhires as a way of making sure people understand the seriousness of this. It's one thing to be handed a sheet about HIPAA in the blizzard of infomation you get during orientation, it's another to see someone talk about what they did and what could have happened. Not only could you make a difference to other newhires at your facility, you'll never know how many people may have read this and learned from it.

Chin up.

bookwormom · Sep 23, 2011

I don't mean to disagree with anything that has been said, but I would like to observe that on nights, especially if there are periods when you are the only RN on duty, you may benefit from being acquainted with every patient on the floor. I think that getting report only on your own patients and knowing nothing about the others leaves you wide open to problems when you are covering breaks or when there are emergencies.

I remember the time when you got report on all the patients on the floor. There were some advantages to this, in my opinion.

limonada · Sep 23, 2011

I agree with bookwormom...To the OP-were you looking at information of various patients throughout the hospital, or just on your own unit? I know they say that you are only allowed to see the information of your own patients, but as the above poster said, you may need to cover while another nurse goes on break, and you should definitely know what is going on with the patients you are covering then. I don't see how you could possibly get in trouble for that. I'm sorry that you're going through this and I wish you all the best. Try not to freak out yet. Maybe if you explain your side of the story they will see that you truly did not have any bad intentions and will just reprimand you in some small way and then everything will go back to normal. I know a lot of the posters on here have been talking about worst case scenarios, but try to keep those out of your mind. I guess it's good to be prepared for the worst, but this just makes me so sad because it sounds like you truly had no bad intentions and you do not deserve to be feeling the way you do right now! I guess just keep in mind that those are worst case scenarios. It really might not end up being quite that horrible. Good luck and please keep us posted :redbeathe

RainMom · Sep 23, 2011

Sorry to hear you're learning about this the hard way. Legal topics and HIPAA were part of the first concepts stressed to us in school. We were specifically told that there is a record of every computer file we access and that even if we had a medical record at the facility, we could not access our own records. To look at any records beyond our assigned patient, even if it was our own, was grounds for automatic dismissal from the program.

CrunchRN, ADN, RN · Sep 23, 2011

Get over it! Lesson learned. Time to move on. Now you know and it will not happen again. You didn't hurt or kill anyone. You just violated a rule. It is NOT the end of the world. You need to get things back in perspective.

At worst you will be fired or suspended. If that happens you just tell future eomployers you learned your lesson and accentuate the positive things you have to offer.

Now pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get on with life.

This is nothing to lose 15 lbs about and not even close to the end of the world.