Hospital Implements New Minimum Necessary Polices for Telephone Messages
Hospital Implements New Minimum Necessary Polices for Telephone Messages
Covered Entity: General Hospital
Issue: Minimum Necessary; Confidential Communications
A hospital employee did not observe minimum necessary requirements
when she left a telephone message with the daughter of a patient that
detailed both her medical condition and treatment plan. An OCR
investigation also indicated that the confidential communications
requirements were not followed, as the employee left the message at the
patient’s home telephone number, despite the patient’s instructions to
contact her through her work number. To resolve the issues in this case,
the hospital developed and implemented several new procedures. One
addressed the issue of minimum necessary information in telephone
message content. Employees were trained to provide only the minimum
necessary information in messages, and were given specific direction as
to what information could be left in a message. Employees also were
trained to review registration information for patient contact
directives regarding leaving messages. The new procedures were
incorporated into the standard staff privacy training, both as part of a
refresher series and mandatory yearly compliance training.
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| Hospital Implements New Minimum Necessary Polices for Telephone Messages Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Minimum Necessary; Confidential Communications A hospital employee did not observe minimum necessary requirements when she left a telephone message with the daughter of a patient that detailed both her medical condition and treatment plan. An OCR investigation also indicated that the confidential communications requirements were not followed, as the employee left the message at the patient’s home telephone number, despite the patient’s instructions to contact her through her work number. To resolve the issues in this case, the hospital developed and implemented several new procedures. ...read more |
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| Can a covered entity use existing aspects of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to give individuals the right to decide whether sensitive information about them may be disclosed to or through a health information organization (HIO)? Yes. To the extent a covered entity is using a process either to obtain consent or act on an individual’s right to request restrictions under the Privacy Rule as a method for effectuating individual choice, policies can be developed for obtaining consent or honoring restrictions on a granular level, based on the type of information involved. For example, specific consent and restriction policies could ...read more |
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