5 ms·
Why?
by Touche 7y ago
Why?
- baggy_trough 7y agoCan’t have the hoi polloi knowing facts, can we?
- edoceo 7y agoIn USA all these communication are supposed to go through the official channels now - it's VP Mike Pence. Tight information control from Dear Leader's right hand man is how we know everything will be OK.
- jurassic 7y agoHospitals are not part of the Executive Branch of government which means they're not required to channel comms through the White House. They might be violating patient privacy / HIPAA by speaking out, but that's a different issue.
- nostrademons 7y agoPence only has control of federal government employees within the administrative branch. Their nominal boss is President Trump, so he has the authority to fire them if they disobey him or his deputies. Private citizens and state/local officials can say anything they want - subject to HIPAA restrictions, which I suspect is what this thread is about.
- freehunter 7y agoDoes HIPAA come into play here?
- rolph 7y agoonly if you use a name or otherwise identify a patient
- three_seagrass 7y agoThere's no PII or remote possibility of linking it back to the person, so no.
- noelsusman 7y agoAdmission dates are PHI, and this gets pretty close to that.
- three_seagrass 7y agoEven if they stated the exact admission date, it's unique to however many hundreds to thousands of people checked in that day to that specific facility, so not really.
- deathanatos 7y ago(IANAL!) It might be PHI ("protected health information") under US law (I don't see how it isn't, but again, not a lawyer), and if it is, one probably shouldn't be posting it to Internet forums.
- bkanber 7y agoPHI is the same as PII: it can be used to identify a patient. It does not apply here.
- tyxodiwktis 7y agoIt’s a violation of the patient’s privacy and unprofessional. From the Kaiser Principles of Responsibility: “discuss patient information: - only when it is required to do your job” https://www.providers.kaiserpermanente.org/info_assets/cpp_cod/cod_principlesofresponsibility.pdf https://www.providers.kaiserpermanente.org/info_assets/cpp_c... Random HN readers may not be able to identify this person, but one of their coworkers might. How would you feel if you went to the hospital with suspicious symptoms during the height of epidemic hysteria and one of the employees started posting tidbits about you on the Internet? How many people might avoid going to the hospital with symptoms of this or something else because they don’t want to risk a gossiping employee outing then on the Internet?