Have any of you people at U.S. hospitals been hearing anything about
this?  HIPAA is a federal law (Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996), and the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) has issued a regulation,"Standards for Privacy of
Individually Identifiable Health Information," which is applicable to
entities covered by HIPAA.  Our risk management and legal department is
scrambling to make sure we're in compliance with this by the deadline,
which is April of 2003.  I only found 3 references in the archives last
July referring to this, which leads me to wonder if our hospital the only
one that is having fits about it.

My institution truly seems to be in a paranoid state over the privacy
aspect of this regulation.  We used to relay information about mothers and
babies for whom we had concerns to the local Public Health departments so
the nurses could follow up.  Now the hospital refuses to give out any info
unless the mother has signed a consent.  Since the nurses are not
explaining this well, almost nobody signs the consent, so public health is
getting no info.  Now they (the Risk Management department) are throwing up
roadblocks to our ability to do phone follow-up of mothers.

Please let me know if this is an issue at your institution, and whether
you've been told to change your practice in any way.  I really appreciate it.

Becky Krumwiede, RN, IBCLC
Appleton, Wisonsin

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