Welcome to Sacramento Street Medicine!

Some reminders about

Patient Confidentiality and Trust

Welcome to Our Office, Our Patients!

• We are excited to have you join our organization, our patients.

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• You are entering our world of patients and their very personal medical problems.

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Be respectful

We want to be a part of your education

• We want to help you achieve your objectives in this clinical experience in our organization.

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• But even more, we want to inspire you to get more involved in advocating and working to improve the lives of those experiencing homelessness.

We welcome you…

• To the joy and responsibility…

…of caring for our patients.

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One responsibility is to abide by HIPAA rules that guide patient confidentiality.

�H.I.P.P.A.= The Federal Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996/2003

• HIPAA rules were invented to…
• Balance between improving the flow of information
• While protecting the privacy of patients.

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• The patient has the right to…
• Request access to health info.
• Request to amend their health info.
• Request restrictions to information sharing
• Request accountability of disclosures.

HIPAA rules require us to….

• Treat all things we learn about patients as confidential

- We can’t tell anyone else

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• Provide more control to patients over their personal health information

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• Punish those who misuse patient information by imposing criminal & civil penalties

HIPAA rules say….

• You can’t talk about patients outside of the team with anyone

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• Clinicians should only access the medical information that is needed for their job/clinical experience.

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• We need patients to give permission before we can give information to others on their behalf.

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• Keep medical records in a secure place-both paper & electronic.

If you are using electronic medical records….

• You should have a unique password-don’t share with others

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• Do not access information on yourself, your family, your friends, staff or any other person.

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• You have a duty to report any breach in confidentiality to your supervising doctor and/or camp lead.

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• Remember most computer systems can track all access to records.

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• Inappropriate access is punishable by federal and state law.

You may see more information on-line

• Find the entire HIPAA privacy summary; sign up for alerts

www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html

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• See examples of privacy agreements & training materials www.insidehopkinsmedicine.org/hipaa www.shadow.med.unc.edu www.privacyrights.org www.infoscope.mcw.edu/FileLibrary/GroupInfoScopeHIPAA /MCW_HIPAA_Booklet.pdf

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• Georgetown guides give rules for state by state records

http://hpi.georgetown.edu/privacy/records.html

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Let’s suppose …

• You saw your teacher in the waiting room…..

…you are not allowed to tell anyone else

Let’s suppose…

• You really worked a lot with one patient and got to know them well during a camp visit…

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…You must not e-mail or “befriend” them on Facebook or other social networking site.

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This is a ‘professional’ relationship, not a social one.

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Let’s suppose …

• You were very excited to see a patient’s new walking progress and you take the elevator to lunch with the nurse…

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…You are not allowed to talk about it in the elevator around others.

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We welcome you …

• Together we can do more… ...to care for our patients & their families.

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Please sign our confidentiality

agreement now.

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Thank you….

Welcome to our practice!