In which patients’ phone numbers, addresses, and Social Security numbers were given. Privacy also was violated when the public could overhear phone conversations with insurance companies or other medical consultants The study was in casual conversations between employees at workstations or in the cafeteria, where hospital personnel discussed health information about patients and co-workers. "While health care providers may not be malicious in their disclosures, they are still sharing patients’ most personal information with unauthorized individuals, which has the potential to create problems for the patients."īrann notes that disclosure of patient information can lead to identity theft, discrimination, or social stigma if a medical condition or patient identification information is inadvertently revealed. "Confidentiality breaches are occurring daily," she says. Fifty-one patients also were interviewed about medical privacy. "Even though the study was conducted before the health insurance act was law, I don’t think we would see a great difference in our results."įor the study, Brann only recorded observations in places that were accessible by hospital visitors, such as hallways, elevators, waiting rooms, and cafeterias. "I noticed several instances when health care providers would discuss patients’ information with other health care workers without being very discreet," she says. Mattson notes that hallway conversations can constitute breaches of HIPAA, which protects patients’ medical information and limit access to that information.īrann agrees, saying the research was prompted in part by what she observed while volunteering at a hospital as an undergraduate at Purdue. She suggests that they "seize the opportunities to teach privacy awareness and skills." Mattson says the research should be a warning to health care risk managers.
So, not only is there a need for privacy laws, but also we see how challenging it is to maintain such laws in the simplest setting of people talking to each other." "But we found that the daily conversations of physicians, nurses, hospital staff and technicians can jeopardize the same kind of personal information.
Set of federal privacy laws to prevent health care providers and institutions from divulging or selling patient information," Mattson says. "The country has recently invested a tremendous amount of resources in the nation’s largest Their work shows patient privacy is breached when hospital employees talk about patient cases in public areas, such as the cafeteria, or with people outside of work. The research was conducted at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, by Maria Brann, assistant professor of communication studies at West Virginia University in Morgantown, and Marifran Mattson, associate professor of communicationĪt Purdue. Have you ever been walking through the hospital and overheard staff talking about patients? So have plenty of other people, according to new research that warns such overheard conversations can be a serious breach of patient confidentiality. Hallway talk can violate patient confidentiality
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