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Is this a HIPAA breach?

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Dissent

Over on HIPAA Blog, Jeff Drummond poses this question:

Is this a HIPAA breach?  A guy had a leg amputated, and the hospital threw the leg in the trash, with the patient’s name written on it.  The cops found it in the landfill and, as you might expect, checked up on the guy, thinking foul play might’ve been involved.

One could argue that, while the name written on the leg is definitely an identifier, the leg itself is not “information” and therefore this could not be protected health information.  However, the presence of the leg (with the idenfitier) implies or imparts some information, even if it’s not “information” itself.

I would suspect OCR would consider this to be PHI, based on past experience, but if you wanted to say it wasn’t, I’d say you at least would have a leg to stand on.

Yes, you may take a moment to groan at his humor, but then do think about it: is this likely a breach of HIPAA?  I agree with Jeff that HHS would likely consider the identifiable leg PHI.

But if you think it isn’t although it’s personally identifiable medical waste of sorts, then would your answer on the privacy aspect under HIPAA be the same if it was a foetus instead of a leg?

 

Category: Health Data

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