Confidential medical information, or is it? How comfortable will you feel NOW?

HIPPA and OSHA both have good rules and good intentions but people working in a hospital know the rules are not always followed. Think about just the nurses and doctors who have access to charts. Each 24 hrs has 2 and sometimes 3 shifts depending on the hospital and whether they are working 8 or 12 hr shifts. Assuming they are working 8 hr shifts, that is 3 charge nurses for 5 days and 3 more for the other 3 days. Then there are the nurses who work under the charge nurse who has 6 or 8 patients. Then there are the PCA's who chart vital signs on the chart. Nurses don't have the same patients everyday. Depending on who is off each day the nurse could be at the other end of the hall. Or she could be floated to another floor. Nurses know each other from other floors. A nurse pulled to another floor where she knows other nurses will sometimes be told which charts to look at if she gets a chance. In a teaching hospital students look at a chart and medica students and the list goes on. Doctors sit at the nurses station and discuss interesting or unusual cases with housekeepers around. Lab personel put pages on the chart. Resp, physical therapy, unit secretaries, pharmacist put notes on charts. Most of the time everyone is too busy to watch what chart everyone else is looking at. The charts are audited for missed charges by hospital personel. They are audited by OSHA to see things are properly documented. A lot of that is neccessary. The more a nurse can know about a patient the better nurse she can be. As with any profession they are made up of people. And people are human. People are not supposed to steal or cheat on their spouses but it happens every day. If you look back at some of the people who see the chart you can see that even if no one said a word to each other a lot of people are out there who know what is going on. Things are not as they should be.

The new HIPPA laws are changing how info is handled. I know my hubby had to fire a person in the office cause she was going into the computer and looking at charts she had no business seeing. They can tell who looked at what. It's recorded. I think the snooping will be cut out a lot with the new laws.

My SIL is a nurse and they have all had training on the new laws. Their are even some questions the nurses cannot ask a patient cause it's not important to the case.

Just think how it use to be. Any person working in a doc's office could look through anyone's chart and learn all kinds of interesting things about their neighbors or aquantances. The new HIPPA laws are stopping this.

Yeah... I believe it. And now they want to make your medical records available to any medical personnel who deems it necessary. We're one step away from the chip they will implant in your body with all your medical records, dental, credit reports, etc. Big Brother is closer than you think.


Linda