Home Health & Hospice Week

With hurricane season already in progress, you should know the four situations where sharing patient information is OK during a disaster, according to the HHS Office for Civil Rights.

Providers can share information about patients when doing so is necessary to provide treatment; identify, locate, and notify family members or anyone else responsible for that individual’s care or that individual’s location, condition, or death; and prevent or reduce a significant imminent threat to the health and safety of that individual or to the public (“consistent with applicable law and the provider’s standards of ethical conduct”), OCR says.

Providers maintaining a directory of patients also can release an individual patient’s info if a person calls or asks whether that individual patient is at the facility, where she is at the facility, and her general condition, OCR says.