// Two old ladies sitting in a tree, a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g me.//

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, known as HIPAA, prevents me from divulging patient information.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for personal health information held by covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information. At the same time, the Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of personal health information needed for patient care and other important purposes. 

The Security Rule specifies a series of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for covered entities to use to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information.

Basically, what you need to know about HIPAA is that anyone in a healthcare setting in the US must abide by it. It’s the law. And what it means is that you cannot share patient information (name, address, medical information, age, etc.) to anyone outside the facility. You can’t say “I saw Suzie today - skinny Suzie from high school - in bariatrics of all places. Can you believe that?” It’s not just grounds for termination. It’s lawsuit material. And the defendant will win.

Somehow the idea of privacy and identity protection is unthinkable to these two women who frequent my workplace.

Imagine two little confused elderly women. They want to see a patient. Said patient is recently deceased. What do you say? Answer: “I’m sorry, they’re not here. You’ll have to get in touch with the family.”

I’m telling you now - if you ever hear that, the patient “expired.”

The women tried to ask me if the patient was dead, how they died, they wanted information on their medical history… I. Was. Furious.

This information is given to the next of kin and/or medical proxy. They have the right to share with whomever. We tell them and that’s it. If you want to know anything, go to the family.

NOT. ME.

Woman 1: Is there an information booth where they can tell me these kind of things?

Me: I’m the closest you’re going to get to such a thing and I can’t divulge that kind of information to you under any circumstances, I’m sorry.

Woman 1: That’s ridiculous! Any other hospital would-

Me: Excuse me, but if any other hospital has done that for you in the past fifteen years or so, they’re no longer in business. It’s a national law. I cannot divulge that information and that’s it.

Woman 2: Where’s the bathroom?

I knew they weren’t going to use the bathroom. I knew exactly where they planned on going.

The front medical ICU nurses’ station thinking they’d actually get somewhere with their search.

Where they would be met with one hell of an earful from the person I knew had that shift. So I didn’t stop them. And it was oh so satisfying to see the scowls on their faces as they hit yet another dead end from yet another short sassafrass.