Question: I’m always concerned about protecting our patients’ health information, especially if they receive care that they don’t want to become common knowledge. What’s your advice for these situations, especially when the patient receives care from multiple departments in the hospital?
New Jersey Subscriber
Answer: You’re smart to be concerned on your patients’ behalf. Just because you flag a service that a patient doesn’t want disclosed to his health plan doesn’t mean that information couldn’t still get leaked or pop back up at any time, such as during follow-up care services. But you can plug these holes by asking certain questions to dig down into your organization’s information flow.
According to Bruce Davidson, RN, MS, MM, LNHA, a health care consulting manager with Eide Bailly, in a recent analysis, when a patient requests that you not disclose protected health information (PHI) to his insurer, make sure you can thoroughly honor this request by asking the following questions: