Hello our place is retail optical store we provide glasses only. No exam or contact lenses.
Q: Will the hippa effect us in terms of Patient's Confidential info?
Should we have a lock for PC info?
Feed back appreciated.
Hello our place is retail optical store we provide glasses only. No exam or contact lenses.
Q: Will the hippa effect us in terms of Patient's Confidential info?
Should we have a lock for PC info?
Feed back appreciated.
I believe you are required to be Hipaa compliant. It's not as bad as you think. Protect the patients private health info like you already do. Buy some blank sheets with your privacy policy. Post one, have new patients sign one and keep in their record. Have extras to give out if patients request. You can order preprinted sheets from AOA or eye care catalouges like Colwell. Its not that bad. Also you should have started this April 14,2003. I would double check the CMS web site www.CMS.gov to see if you need to be compliant. It has a lot of good info.
Don't sweat it.
Check this out. If you can follow the flow, you will have your answer.
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/hipaa/hipaa2/...Flowcharts.pdf
Hello to everyone who replied and thanks very much.
Mr Stopper you've said "Protect the patients private health info like you already do" can you clarify that more. For instance you mean the : Rx, address, phone#, name. anything else i should add?
I made the assumption that you were already protecting the patients private health info. Yes Name, address etc. diagnosis any prescriptions. Example, Mrs. Jones comes in for new glasses. She tells you she has diabetes and cataracts. She leaves and you tell Mr. Smith that Mrs. Jones has cataracts and diabetes. YOU CAN"T do that. You can't disclose any info about that patient without consent to anyone. Hope that helps. Check out the CMS website for what classifies as Private health info.
Unless I am mistaken, if the patient forget (or wasn't given) thier Rx, I cannot get the doctor to call, fax or otherwise communicate this with me unless the patient goes by his office and signs a release (the good news is no one can give this out to Linda Carter anymore either). I cannot refer to any patient by name, they have to take a number. Records must be secure so that patient's, visitors, my secretary, clean-up crew or anyone can access them (why in the hell anyone would want to know anyone's spectacle or contact lens Rx for any purpose other than making them same escapes me).
Hippa is just more Big Brother government **** designed to make the agency involved feel important and justify it's existance.
Chip
Well Mr. Stopper thanks for the info and sure i will carefully learn the web site.
Also Mr.Foveator to you also thank very much and also will carefully educate myself on the web link/pdf file you sent it to me.
Hello Mr.Chip Anderson
Thanks for the comments on the other posts. You mean if i don't provide the RX to the customer i don't have many problems?
Did i understood you correctly?
If you are the "precriber" and you do not provide the Rx to the patient at the time of examination you are in violation of "Eyeglass 1".
However if you are a precriber and you have neglected to provide Rx or the patient lost the Rx, you cannot provide this information to a third party (optical shop, pharmacy, etc.) without written concent from the patient.
If you are a third party (optical shop, pharmacy, etc.) you cannot forward the Rx to anyone without written authority from the patient.
And no I am not sure how you get such information (without codeing the patient's name) to an from the lab or manufacturing facility.
Chip
Hello again Mr Chip Anderson you've said
1st of all we give service of selling eyeglasses only. No examinations or selling of Contact Lenses. Customer comes in with the Rx from the doctor and we provide frames, lenses, coatings at a affordable and reasonable price.If you are the "precriber" and you do not provide the Rx to the patient at the time of examination you are in violation of "Eyeglass 1".
And to the rest of your statements we gladly haven't had such occurence in our business.
:bbg: :D
Chip,
Are you sure about this? Where is this in the HIPAA sites?
I cannot refer to any patient by name, they have to take a number.
Diane
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Chip:
Somebody has given you some bad info on HIPAA and its "Big Brother" implications. AOA and OLA, among others, are telling a vastly different story.
The relationship between provider and the lab is clearly spelled out in the HIPAA regs. Covered providers can provide PHI, including the dreaded patient name, to labs as part of fulfilling the treatment (i.e. the production of spectacles). This may be done without signed releases, business associates agreements, or any other mechanisms. Assertions that HIPAA is merely regulations gone awry are vastly overblown.
RT
Chip said:
If you are a third party (optical shop, pharmacy, etc.) you cannot forward the Rx to anyone without written authority from the patient.
Chip is correct according to our legal staff. You do need written authorization.
But what about our rights? (I'm just playing devils advocate) Why should I have to give my name and address or other pertinent information to a patient. What if your in a heated disscussion
and the patient wants your name. Are the privacy laws going to protect you and me?:D
There are 3 exceptions to the privacy rule.
You can release health care information to a 3rd party without the patient's permission for these 3 reasons: treatment, payment, and health care operations. (TPO)
Release of a spectacle or CL Rx to a 3rd party to be filled is part of treatment. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has stated that.
Payment refers to collection agencies, small claims court, insurance companies, whatever you need to do to get paid.
Health care operations refers to stuff like audits and peer reviews.
On the light side, patient confidentiality can be protected by using the classical two-bagger rule. One bag over each customer' head and one on the examiner....just in case the customer's bag falls off. Of course, you would have to cut two holes in each bag for the eyes.
bzzt
Find a new legal staff.jediron said:
Chip said:
If you are a third party (optical shop, pharmacy, etc.) you cannot forward the Rx to anyone without written authority from the patient.
Chip is correct according to our legal staff. You do need written authorization.
I wanted to say, also, about the transfer of RXs you CAN have signed "professional agreements" with the common ODs and MDs that will prevent each patient having to sign a release and the remainder will have to sign an authorization and fax it back.
Also, about the patients names in the office: You only have to make reasonable attempts to conceal (i.e. speaking in a lower voice or having the customer write their name and address on the file. At this time the regs cover businesses that submit information electronically.
~Cindy
"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." -Catherine Aird-
Paw said:
You can release health care information to a 3rd party without the patient's permission for these 3 reasons: treatment, payment, and health care operations. (TPO)
Release of a spectacle or CL Rx to a 3rd party to be filled is part of treatment. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has stated that.:
Our legal staff said that may be true in the way you read the Hippa regulations but they still advise us to get written permission until the smoke clears and level headedness reins.
There premise is: You give the patient his or her RX and as always they leave it home, lose it what ever, the way the law is written you need a sighned permission from the patient to release the information. Without that release your violating Hippa. Now that maybe sticking to the vary fine print of Hippa but I would rather vary on the too much side then on the too little side. Remember in a court of law you cannot plead ignorance of the law just because you only wanted to follow part of it.
Once this all clears I bet we won't have to do half of what were doing.
Remember when you look in a mirror you don't always see what you want to see. See :bbg:
shanbaum said: Find as new legal staff.
The legal staff we have is fine. If you interview 10 people after a sporting event, car accident, fire or ect. you will get 10 different answers. This is the same thing, everybody has a different opinion
on what is right and what is wrong in following Hippa. Once the smoke clears I think you will find a simple and easy plan to follow.
:bbg:
Diane said: Chip
Are you sure about this? Where is this in the HIPAA sites?
I cannot refer to any patient by name, they have to take a number.
Diane in the original manuscript for Hippa there was a section in there that said you could not call a patient by there name. The medical doctors went nuts, especially if you could see some of there waiting rooms, they are packed. The last I heard they had revised that, to what Im not sure because I don't think Hippa knows. Since the inception of Hippa I would bet the house, the Hippa offices have been inundated with calls on what to do with the new regulations.:bbg:
There are some things on which the Privacy Rule is perfectly clear, and one of them is that you do not need an individual's consent, written or otherwise, to convey that individual's personal health information to other parties for the purpose of treatment.jediron said:
shanbaum said: Find a new legal staff.
The legal staff we have is fine. If you interview 10 people after a sporting event, car accident, fire or ect. you will get 10 different answers. This is the same thing, everybody has a different opinion
on what is right and what is wrong in following Hippa. Once the smoke clears I think you will find a simple and easy plan to follow.
:bbg:
There's a short summary of the requirements of the Privacy Rule at:
http://www.hhs.gov/news/facts/privacy.html
and a longer one at:
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacysummary.pdf
In the latter, pay particular attention to the item at the bottom of page 4.
Not everything is debatable; while there are frequently numerous opinions about any topic, not all of them are significant. In this case, you can find the opinions that count at the above-referenced sites.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I do sleep with one.
Hi Jediron, Diane and Chip,
The name thing has been resolved in favor of the physicians. They may now call patients by name in the waiting room.
hj
"Always laugh when you can. It is a cheap medicine"
Lord Byron
Take a photo tour of Cape Cod and the Islands!
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Yesterday, I had my first instance of the hippa influence; a couple brought their daughter in for glasses, while here, the dad decided that he wanted to acquire new eyewear, so we called his eydoctor for the rx, as usual, they faxed us a 'release' for for the client to sign, he signed it, we faxed it back, then they faxed the rx back, terrible waste of fax paper, we'll just have to cut down some more forests to abide by this law...another question, though; we have folks register in the office on an open sign in sheet, and note what they're in for, if,and that's a big IF, they can see, they will know who the other folks in the office are, is this a violation of the hippa laws? do we need to get numbers? and, if we need numbers, what size and color should they be?
hippapottamus
:bbg: The interesting thing about all this hippa junk, is most of my patients think its annoying and a bunch of crapt
I had one guy who actually wanted to read the privacy statement before he signed the acknowledgement. I wanted to say, "Hey, buddy, it's not a contract !!!" But instead I just explained that he was signing an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that he was given the statment, and he could read it at his leisure.
I agree with harry a saake, most if not all of my patients take a ho hum attitude and say: Ya I all ready have about 6 of these notices already.
Big government all over again.
:bbg:
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