For health-care consumers, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA) rules that went into effect on Monday mean more forms, more questions
- and more privacy protection that many thought they had already, according
to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
HIPAA affects insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, dentists, pharmacies,
nursing homes, blood banks, and organ and tissue banks - and people trying to
do such previously everyday things as determine the status of loved ones who
are hospitalized or help them with their insurance forms.
When Karen Marshall called her family's health insurance company this week
with a question about her husband's coverage, the company asked her if her husband
had given permission for them to talk about his account.
"We've been married 32 years!" she said. In the end, though, she
got the information she wanted.
Shirley Ross, 65, was surprised to read in a new privacy notice during a doctor's
visit that providers can no longer give out or sell patient information for
marketing purposes. "I thought I already had privacy protection,"
Ross said. "Maybe that's why I was getting all those calls from drug reps."
Under HIPAA, patients can limit how much information is given out about them
and their health. Patients are given information on their privacy rights as
they're treated or admitted to a medical facility. A patient admitted to a hospital,
for example, can choose not to be listed in the facility's directory. That means
a journalist can't call and find out anything about that person's condition.
But as the Enquirer notes, it also means friends and family can't either. And
cards and flowers won't be delivered to that patient's room - they'll be sent
back.
"I have a feeling that when patients find out all that it entails - that
their mail will be sent back, that their flowers will be sent back - that they
won't take advantage of opting out" of a facility's directory, said Mary
Lopez, a nurse-attorney in the Health Alliance's HIPAA program management office.
The Enquirer also reports:
- Consumers who pick up prescriptions for other people - spouses, parents,
adult children, etc. - are being asked to sign "good faith" forms
that say the patient has given permission for them to pick up their medication.
- Have you tried calling your mother's doctor this week to ask whether her
new medication is what's making her so forgetful? Unless your mother - or
father or spouse or adult child - has cleared it, the doctor can't discuss
the patient's care with you.
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