Hippa

Matt Johnson

PHIL 2130

Susan Fielder

August 20, 2006

Mid-Term Paper

HIPAA states that an individual’s personal medical information cannot be disseminated to a third party without the express consent of the patient. Third parties include family, friends, employers, other patients, or even other medical professionals outside of the treatment of a patient. This set of federal rules and regulations can often expose individuals to circumstances where their compliance with the HIPAA rules and regulations comes into question.

Such is the case with the circumstances in our case study. A student from a school, who his receiving hands on education and training at a hospital, was overheard by the family of the patient as the student described many aspects of the patients condition. In addition, the student went into personal opinion on the nature and character of the patient. The administration of the hospital has found out who the student was, and notified the school that the student attends. The questions then are weather or not this violated any HIPAA or student agreement rules, and what actions should be taken.

According to HIPAA an individual’s health information cannot be used or shared without written permission. (Summary). Since we don’t know if this permission was granted, we can assume that it wasn’t. Any information then about the patient cannot under any circumstances be shared with unauthorized personnel. However, the student was sharing this information with other students, who are indeed authorized personnel. The violation here though, is the venue in which this information was shared: the public elevator. Had this conversation taken place behind closed doors, in a private meeting, or in some other venue that was secure there would be no violation. However, sharing this information in the elevator for all to hear would be no different than having the conversation over the loud speaker during the 7th inning of a baseball game.

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