Question

You are the Cardiac unit manager within a hospital. As you walked to your car after work, you saw a piece of paper lying on the ground. When you picked it up, you were able to read several patient names, room numbers, and notes about their medical condition.

• Briefly summarize the issue and violation of this situation presents.
• What is your reporting obligation, and who should you contact regarding what you found?
• What repercussions could the person responsible for dropping this paper face?

Answer 1

This incident seems to be the records of patient details, usually taken by nurses as a notes about patient during hand over or shift change. This contains confidential details of patient which has to be secured and kept confidential and discarded proper after the need by the concerned staff.Carelessness in doing so is a HIPAA violation under HIPAA Privacy Rule and the concerned person will be subjected to penalties .This types of notes are possible to be stern by any professionals who have access to PHI.

This has to be reported to the management or the administration. So that they can alert the IT department to ensure security from hacking patient details in all form.The HHS office for Civil Rights has to be reported ,who will investigate on the issue

The person can be subjected for financial penality for violation of HIPAA privacy rule due to lmpermissible Disclosure of Protected Health Information