HIPAA question

[soontobePAstudent]

Hi, let's say someone works in surgery. And he wants to take a picture of herself during surgery (the patient is in the room, but not in the picture). And the picture frame only shows someone scrubbed in during surgery. That person wants to share this picture on social media. Is it violating hipaa?

[rev ronin]

How would that violate HIPAA?

 

Understand the data elements covered by HIPAA, and what's depicted in the picture.  Only if you have an overlap do you have a HIPAA violation.  If the patient's name is written on a white board that's in the picture, or an image of the patient (X-ray, etc.) that might be a violation.

 

Realize that HIPAA is fundamentally nonsensical.  My former employer has an eight-digit patient numbering scheme, covering tens of thousands of active patients.  If I were to write a quick script to generate numbers 00000001 through 99999999 in a text file, and upload that file to the Internet, WITHOUT ANY OTHER PATIENT DATA WHATSOEVER, just that relatively sparse patient data interspersed with thousands of records of not-patient-data, that would still be tens of thousands of HIPAA violations.  (And yes, my ridiculous scenario is inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God)

 

A bunch of baboons could probably have written a better law, because what we have in HIPAA is a threefold travesty: 1) It doesn't do a bloody thing to protect patient privacy, 2) It's an unworkable mess to actually implement, and 3) it serves to drive up healthcare costs by increasing the costs of regulation (government) and compliance (consultants), all the while failing us as I've described in 1 and 2. Anyone who tells you different is probably part of problem 3.  Oh, and 4) Random healthcare administrators will pull ridiculous policies out of orifices not usually considered policy-producing, and blame HIPAA for them.

[soontobePAstudent]

Just overly worried about this because what can be seen non violating can get your license taken away in an instant. 

For example let's say you, the doctor, the surgical assistant are all in the picture working on the patient, no skin of the patient is shown, only drapes, but you know that there is a patient on the field, would that be a violation.

 

Something like this:

 

 

[UGoLong]

I would suspect that you would be OK if the patient is not identifiable, you can't read anything on a whiteboard etc, and the date, time, and location are not identifiable.

[cop to pa]

If there is nothing of or about the patient in the photo, you are alright. If there is, get written consent.

[lanime]

I say don't do it. If there is any doubt in your mind, there is probably a good reason. I have worked in several ORs where pictures are absolutely not allowed (unless for the Medical Examiner, and even that is a big ordeal to get approval). Don't jeopardize your career for a "hey look at me" social media pic... You never know who is watching and who might get upset. If the picture is for education or work related, then go through the proper channels to get it approved before hand. Just my personal thought/experience.

[fishbum]

Even if it doesn't violate HIPAA, how professional is a scrub selfie? Where's the benefit?