Only treating physicians are allowed to access patient records unless a parent gives written consent for another party to do so. Smith was never one of Maya’s treating doctors, and on the day she opened her confidential records, there was no active DCF investigation. HIPAA violations are punishable by significant fines and up to ten years in prison.
When a 10-year-old girl complained of mysterious pain, a doctor suspected child abuse. How far would she go to prove it?
www.thecut.com
SBMFF. I can't comment on the specifics as I didn't/don't follow the case closely enough, but the above snippet from the article isn't entirely accurate. Yes, it's a HIPAA violation to be in a patient's chart if you're not involved in the care of the patient. But you do not have to be a TREATING doctor to be in the chart. Doctors consult to other doctors all the time, within the same health system. There are three reasons to be in the chart of a hospitalized patient:
Treating doctor -- this is what we all think of and know as being legal under HIPAA obviously.
Consulting doctor -- this is when the treating doctor puts in a consult for a specialist's opinion. Generally, the specialist (say neurology) would see the patient, do their own full evaluation, then make
recommendations to the treating doctor. In this case, the consulting doctor is NOT treating the patient. Their "customer" is the treating doctor. So they make recommendations to the treating doctor. The treating doctor is under no obligation to follow those recommendations if they disagree with them.
Curbside consults/E-consults -- this is when the case doesn't necessarily need a full consult (as in, the treating doctor is pretty sure what's going on but just wants another opinion without the full evaluation of a formal consultation). In this case, the curbsided specialist would look through the chart and make recommendations to the treating doctor based on chart review. These used to be called curbsides at the time Maya was in the hospital.It's become more formal now to reduce liability and is called E-consult (the E stands for Electronic Medical Record consult) with a note from the curbsided doc to acknowledge he/she was in the chart (this was not required back when Maya was in the hospital; curbsides were rarely documented because no care or patient interaction was provided).
All of the above are involved in the care of the patient and are allowed to be in the chart without a release (if working within the same healthcare system), but only one is the treating doctor.
If Smith worked within the same health system, it would have been completely acceptable and within medical standards back then to be curbsided on this case and honestly, a strong claim could be made that they wanted Smith's expertise before filing with DCF.
You don't need parent's permission to have DCF investigate a case of child abuse, but doctors should always do their due diligence before filing because DCF can cause significant disruption in non-abusive households as well just due to the lengthy investigations and legal costs.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ETA: to be clear, I'm not saying that the hospital isn't wrong. Obviously, the system broke down, they were horribly wrong, and they should be held liable here, IMO. I'm just commenting on HIPAA and the claim in the article.
www.courttv.com
