HIPAA Blog

[ Friday, May 15, 2020 ]

 

Question:

Hello Mr. Drummond,

I've just read the COSMOS April Privacy Brief by Theresa Defino that cites comments from you regarding the press release issued March 24 on the OIG guidance allowing CEs to share lists of people exposed to or treated for covid with first responder dispatches.  Do you know how the recipients of this list will know when to take someone off the list, e.g. the person has been successfully treated for or otherwise cleared from covid?


Answer:

The HIPAA rules and OCR’s guidance don’t address that at all (they also don’t require the disclosures to be made, just note that they are generally allowed in the current environment).  Thus, any removal or revisions to the list would likely come from the initial source of the list, whether it’s the governmental agency that compiles the overall list, usually a county health department in a large state or a state health department in a smaller or less populous state, but could be a hospital or health system that is the primary medical provider for a particular jurisdiction.

You make a good point, but it’s one that should be directed at the entities providing the lists or the dispatchers and first responders receiving and using the list – how do you know not to keep treating people who have recovered as if they were still sick?

As I noted in my comments to Theresa, it would be better if the list were kept by the covered entity (and available 24/7/365) and the dispatchers simply contacted the list creator and asked each time they were dispatched to deal with a particular person or a particular residential address.  That might not be practical.


Jeff [5:03 PM]

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