So I was speaking to a friend of mine about how to deal with phone calls from relatives of patients. What exactly constitutes a violation of HIPAA privacy? Generally I give people status updates and vague information like "they are doing well" or "they're eating and participating well in therapy." It just seems like whole lot of it has to do with nursing judgement. When it comes to exact data like results of CT scan and labs, the general consensus of the floor I work on is to not give the information and to tell them to call the doctor. However, if the patient's relative over the phone already seems to know a considerable amount of information about the patient, I will be a little more than lenient to talk about the patients status. I remember having a meeting with an HIPAA rep, and walking right out of that meeting not knowing anymore than I did before.
