jzzyl

If my friend hadn't communicated the patients last name how could the head of HR and the Administrator have investigated the incident? If she had just communicated patient X they could not have done their job. She did in my opinion only communicate the information needed for them to do their job. She gave only the patients last name and the specific medications, nothing further regarding the patient.

A nurse friend of mine was fired for a ? hipaa violation. Her supervisor readmitted a patient to the long term care independent section of their facility from the nursing section and took the patients word that there were no med. changes when in fact there were. The supervisor had a prn nurse who was unfamiliar with the admission procedures do the chart paperwork review portion of the readmission while she did the patient assessment. My friend caught the errors over a weekend when the supervisor was not working, wrote the supervisor a note regarding the missed med changes listing the specific patient and the med changes, and updated the med record and notified pharmacy of the appropriate changes. The supervisor later retaliated against the nurse and the nurse was written up due to an unrelated, very petty event. In my friends grievance letter to the head of HR, the administrator of the facility and the director of nursing she placed a copy of the note that she had written to her supervisor regarding the above readmission med errors and cited her supervisor's errors. The specific patients last name and the medications involved were cited in the note. She was fired. She was told that the head of HR and the Administrator should not have received this information. Was this a hipaa violation even though she was reporting an unsafe practice, which she felt she was being retaliated against for, to her superiors, in a private fashion.