What do they teach these days in school?!

Nurses HIPAA

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I confronted a nurse who was looking up her previous patient who had been transferred to a higher level of care. Her was response was "whatever, I don't even care!" I then explained to her that it was HIPAA violation 1) could be flagged by corporate 2) could result in discipline and 3) could be reported to the BON. Her response was, "I don't get why, he was my patient so how is that a HIPAA violation?

I of course explained to her why it would be inappropriate but she sort of just blew my off. Seriously? She graduated in the last two years and doesn't get why this a problem?

End of rant.

Any one else have experience with this?

Specializes in Critical Care.
On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 3:20 PM, Oldmahubbard said:

You can't access any information out of curiosity. It does not matter if the patient was yours in the past, you know the person and it's ok, a second cousin is in the hospital, etc, etc.

It's very easily tracked, and always has been.

Personally I think if you are curious about a patient, you are overinvolved

HIPAA does actually allow you access PHI out of "curiosity", but it depends on the specific reason for the curiosity. If you're curious if the information gathered after your care of the patient ended supported the nursing process you formed while caring for the patient, or failed to support it, then that falls under the evaluation of care exception of HIPAA. This does require that facilities have some mechanism to ensure access of PHI after a nurse's direct involvement has ended is limited to evaluation of their care, which many hospitals decide to ensure by impeding the evaluation of care component.

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On 6/18/2019 at 7:03 PM, MunoRN said:

If you're curious if the information gathered after your care of the patient ended supported the nursing process you formed while caring for the patient, or failed to support it, then that falls under the evaluation of care exception of HIPAA. This does require that facilities have some mechanism to ensure access of PHI after a nurse's direct involvement has ended is limited to evaluation of their care, which many hospitals decide to ensure by impeding the evaluation of care component.

This (all of it).

So many times people's understandings of HIPAA are actually their own employer's privacy policies and related statements - which are written to imply that they are justified by moral imperatives rather than the business' own preference for dealing with the related issues.

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Specializes in ICU, trauma, neuro.

I have often pulled up patient charts who were downgraded from ICU (and transferred in a rush as is often the case) to both check my charting, and to ensure that the patient was not "becoming unstable" since our MD's are ultra aggressive in downgrading clients. Nursing (and medical) education is greatly facilitated by being able to track outcomes, and interventions that were effective, ineffective, and neglected. To the extent that HIPAA prevents or discourages this it is harming patients and discouraging optimal outcomes. I suspect that the unwise comment about "not caring about the law" was one made from frustration. Kind of like when I get frustrated at work and start talking about how if I get into too much trouble (for some oversight real or imagined) that "they" can try and find me in the jungles of Kauai.

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When I was working med/surgery, a fellow coworker who was also a nurse, called our unit and asked me to give her lab results on her nephew in the ER- she wasn't even my patient! And I was on a completely different unit! I'm thinking either she is a complete dumb *** or this is a set-up!

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As a recent grad I can say for my school at least that they gave us so much HIPAA training that we were paranoid about everything.

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Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 3:20 PM, Oldmahubbard said:

You can't access any information out of curiosity. It does not matter if the patient was yours in the past, you know the person and it's ok, a second cousin is in the hospital, etc, etc.

I work in a prison. We had an inmate come in who most of you would know, a former pro football player. We had many instances of people looking up his information in the online record just out of curiosity. They were asked by the director to explain their reasons for going into the record (and most of this was not medical information, BTW).

As for me, I wasn't star struck by this guy, and I didn't care what was in his record. He was another inmate with a number.

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