Registry: Child's Play?
Call me a bandwagoner, but I just started reading Julie and Julia (Quite frankly, I'm just a wannabe foodie who wanted something to breeze through after being semi-forced into reading a 500-page sci-fi book). I was poring through Julie Powell's witticisms while enjoying some post-work sunshine yesterday when something caught my eye: Julia Child was a registrar.
I promptly read on through the next chapter and learned that Child managed files for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS)--not anything health-related, as I hoped. (Had I paused to think a moment, I would have realized that cancer registry wasn't all-too-prominent in 1944; the Commission on Cancer didn't make hospital-wide cancer registry a program requirement until 1956.) Still, the unusual job perked my interest, so out came my handy-dandy laptop.
Turns out, the towering gourmand had her registry skills in order. Child tracked officers (sans-electronic means, of course) and eventually worked her way to registering and routing seriously sensitive OSS communications. A number of news reports even classified her as a spy.
So what does this revelation have to do with HIM? Well, you've got to admire the clerk-turned-cook's ability to keep those confidential communications under wraps. Like those mouth-watering meals Child whipped up on TV, private information--including health records--can prove too tempting to pass up. The latest alleged breach? A hospital employee accused of improperly viewing his ex-girlfriend's records and then gossiping about her condition.
Who knows what repercussions were held over Child's head if she leaked any classified information (and who knows whether she ever did), but when HIM professionals indulge and divulge, HIPAA and state privacy laws are there to dish out punishment. Privacy advocates have called for better enforcement of those laws, and some are hopeful the new HIPAA requirements in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will hold violators more accountable. But regardless of the backlash, a breach will always put patients in a vulnerable position.
So, HIMers, what keeps you from breaking the privacy seal and getting a taste of those locked-up details? Is it the punishment, the patient or are you just that disciplined?