At Princeton Health, we all can – and must – play a part in protecting patient privacy.
Failure to properly safeguard protected health information (PHI) is a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and, just as importantly, it endangers the trust we have earned from our patients and the community over the years. One fundamental way to help preserve that trust is by ensuring that patients receive only the correct PHI.
Release of patient information to unauthorized individuals is often accidental. For example, patients may leave an office visit and later notice that their after visit summary includes a page from another patient’s visit. Or perhaps a patient leaves the Emergency Department with a prescription that was ordered for someone else.
These errors usually can be easily prevented. HIPAA violations are taken seriously and may qualify as breaches that are reportable to patients, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and sometimes the news media.
Here are five strategies that may help prevent privacy breaches:
- Encourage patients to obtain information electronically via MyPennMedicine.
- If you must provide hard copies to a patient, print the minimum necessary.
- Collect pages from the printer as quickly as possible.
- Never assume you are the only person who printed to a device.
- Check every page before handing documents to a patient to ensure that each sheet pertains to the patient receiving the information.
Geri Karpiscak, MSN, RN, director of Patient Relations and Customer Service, is the entity privacy officer at Penn Medicine Princeton Health. You may report suspected privacy violations to her at 609-853-7157.
You may also contact the Penn Medicine Privacy Office – privacy@uphs.upenn.edu. If you wish to remain anonymous, please call the 215-PCOMPLY hotline (215-726-6759) or file a complaint online at www.upenn.edu/215pcomply.