Hipaa Policy #34: Fill & Download for Free

In some ways, but I wouldn't recommend it. Let's go into the details.- Covered Entities: Covered entities are insurance companies, employers, and hospitals/clinicians that bill insurance companies/employers for clinical care. Covered Entities cannot be relieved of their responsibilities through HIPAA by the waiver of a patient.- Business Associates are companies/people that have access to PHI through agreements (Business Associates Agreements, or BAAs). You've likely signed one of these with the doctors that are your customers. If you haven't, you are still bound by HIPAA per the clarification provided to the rules in 2013. This means that the hospital doesn't need to obtain a specific release from a patient every time they need/want to share data with a company. Hospitals may inform patients of this release via some paperwork (perhaps to meet other legal requirements), but it's not required by HIPAA itself. This is a contract, so you are bound by the terms of this agreement for liability/procedure in the event of an audit/data breach.-Patients can waive their rights to HIPAA on an entity by entity basis. A common example is that a patient could grant rights to accessing their patient data to their spouse. A patient can also grant access to their PHI for research, but the scope and use of data is regulated by IRB per HIPAA. So, yes, patients can technically waive their HIPAA rights. But, this is usually dictated on an entity by entity basis. A hospital would likely not encourage or facilitate patients sharing data with a company this way because they would have no legal path to investigate or seek damages for improper data access/disclosureSo, where does that leave you? You should protect patient data. It's the right thing to do, even if it's difficult. Even if you don't believe that, you'll probably have a hard time making it through the sales process at most organizations if you can't meet their security criteria to receive PHI. If you need help with HIPAA from a documentation and technical standpiont, companies like accountablehq or Catalyze (where I work) can help.Good luck!

As a hand surgeon, no.As a breast surgeon, yes.For anything in between, you can probably figure it out.Why do you ask?Is this not PC? Is there some new HIPAA policy that I missed?PS reminds me of a joke…A guy walks into a doctors office complaining about a headache. The receptionist asks him to undress and take a seat in the waiting room. He protests.“It's a headache”, he says.“I understand”, she says. “"Take off your clothes and the doctor will be with you in a few minutes”.Reluctantly he takes off his clothes.He’s sitting naked in the waiting room when another naked guy comes and sits next to him.“Did you ever see anything so crazy?”, he asks. “"I came for a lousy headache and they make me undress”.“i know, it's nuts”, the other guy says. “"I just came to fix the air conditioning”.

No. People in the health insurance business and in healthcare often misconstrue HIPAA to make things as opaque as possible. This agent is lying to you, and I would certainly not deal with them anymore.Here’s the truth: All the information about you, the patient, of whatever type, held by any “covered entity” (which means health systems, doctors, insurance companies and the like) is by law fully available to you, the patient, on demand.As of January this year, every covered entity must have available a way to download all of your information online. That’s the law.And you are not a covered entity. Which means whatever information you download, you can do with as you please, including giving it to some other covered entity.And what this agent was refusing to send you was not even about you. It was about a contract he wants you to sign. There is no way that could be covered by the Patient Privacy Act.By the way, you can be dead certain that insurance companies and healthcare organizations will continue to tell you that you can’t have this or that information. The individuals telling you this may sincerely believe it is true, as that is the way their companies have trained them. The companies are wrong. It’s part of a decades-long effort by the industry to keep you in the dark.Find another agent or another insurer.