Your Medical Information, Your Rights: HIPAA

Have you ever signed a HIPAA form at the doctor’s office and wondered what you were actually agreeing to? In this episode, Melody Mulaik breaks down the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to demonstrate that it’s more than just paperwork; it’s a powerful tool for patient empowerment. 

From your right to access your own records to how you can dictate who sees your information, Melody explains how to navigate these protections to ensure your healthcare remains accurate, private, and within your control.

In this episode, Melody discusses:

• [00:00] What is HIPAA and why does it matter to you? 
• [01:12] Your right to access and own copies of your medical and billing records
• [01:58] How to request changes or amendments to inaccurate medical information 
• [02:40] Understanding the Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) 
• [03:45] Requesting restrictions on how your information is shared 
• [04:44] Dictating your communication preferences and confidential contacts 
• [05:33] Withdrawing permission and managing third-party access 
• [06:30] Final recap of patient rights under HIPAA 

Want to Ask Melody? Visit: https://melodymulaik.com/ASK Don’t forget to subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. If you've ever signed a privacy form at the doctor's office and wondered what you were actually agreeing to or, if you've ever found an error in your medical records and didn't know you could fix it, this episode is a must-listen.

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Transcript

Melody 0:12

Hi everybody and welcome to this episode of Take Care. Got a question for Samantha. What is HIPAA and what does this have to do with my rights as a patient? That's a great question. Great abbreviation. So many of you may have heard of the phrase HIPAA to others this may be a new phrase. So, let's go ahead and break that down. So, HIPAA is an abbreviation for the Health, Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. So big long definition for an act that got put into place many decades ago that did a variety of things in the healthcare system. But what we want to focus on today is what does it do in terms related to the rights as a patient. So a great question from Samantha. When you go to the doctor's office, you should or the hospital, you should be getting some paperwork, whether it's electronically and they're having you sign it. Or it may be a physical copy of something and they're saying, oh, this is your HIPAA privacy form. And you may be thinking what am I signing and how does this really protect me? So things to think about. There's several things that are tied up into what is HIPAA. First thing has to do with your medical records and your billing records. So one thing is. As part of your patient's, right under HIPAA is you have the right to get copies of all of your medical records. You technically are the owner of those and any of your billing records, so that could be test results, that could be visit notes from when you go to see your doctor. That could be copies of your medical bills. All of those things are your right to see and to get copies of. And you don't have to give anybody an explanation of why you want copies of them. If you want a copy of it, it's your right to get a copy of it. It's your information and you're allowed to have it. So that's the first thing that HIPAA does for you. The second thing is HIPAA gives you the right to request changes to the medical records. And they may call it a fancy term of amendment or making updates to it. So if you're reading information in your medical records, sometimes that might be when you're leaving a visit, they might give you a copy of what your visit was, or you log into an electronic portal and you can see the information that's in there about you. And when you look at it, you might see that something is wrong, it may be incomplete, it may be inaccurate. You have the right to ask for that to be corrected. It could be they have the wrong medication listed for you. There might be an old diagnosis there or something that just you look at it and you're like that's not right. You have the right as a patient to get that information updated. You want to make sure that your medical record is accurate and it's up to date. The other thing is, it's a part of what's protected for you for HIPAA is understanding how your information can be used and shared with other individuals, right? So part of it is there's something called a notice of privacy practices, and an abbreviation for that is an NPP. Again, we have all these abbreviations in healthcare. And you're entitled to look at it and know or every organization that you interact with who can actually see your information. So you're entitled to know that information, review that information. If you've never looked at one or read one of those before, you're not alone. A lot of people haven't, but it's worth seeing what it says. Sometimes when you go, you might want to ask specifically who has access to your information and how they're using it. And also within that, you have the right to request restrictions. So you can actually ask them to restrict how your information is used and shared. Now, they don't always have to completely agree with your request but you are allowed to ask. For example, it may be your doctor's office may use an outside company to help them collect things. They may do billing with an outside organization, and so they may need to share that information. And you might say, I don't want you to share that information. And they might say, we have to in order to make sure that we're billing your insurance company and things like that. So, that's where it gets a little bit where there may be some difference. But it's important that you could ask that information and find out how it's being used. The other thing is related to communication and confidential communication. So, as your right, as a patient, you get to dictate how they communicate with you. How your doctor's office or how your hospital communicates with you. You may tell them that they can email you. You may tell them they can't. You may let them know that they can leave you a message on your voicemail. They may at your home, or on your cell phone, or you may tell them they absolutely cannot do that. You can also tell them who can have in access to your information. So, how you want to be communicated with as a patient, it's something that's also protected under HIPAA as well. And there's also something called accounting of disclosures. Meaning that if certain people are seeing access to your information, you have the right to know who has access to that. So they don't always tell you, especially if it's within the course of business, but you have the right to ask for who has access to your information. Really, it is all about transparency and you do have the right as part of that too is even if you've told them at one point that someone can have access to your information, you have the right later on to revoke that. At one point, maybe you had a spouse on there and since then you've got to a divorce and you don't want them to see your information. You may have put a child or a parent and now you've decided you don't want them to have access to your information anymore. You totally are within your right to withdraw that permission. So, consent to see your information is not permanent consent, it's consent as until you no longer want to allow someone to have that information. And then, finally electronic access to everything. You can request copies of your medical record and ask that they be sent to a third party. Meaning, it could be sent to another doctor's office, it could be someone else involved in your care. But you have the right to access that information. So a lot of different protections that you have under HIPAA. Again, the primary thing we think about is confidentiality. No one is supposed to be discussing your care with anyone unless there's a need to know. But again, as a reminder, you have the right to have access to your medical records. You have the right to request amendments to your medical records if they're not accurate or complete. You have the right to receive a notice of privacy practices, how that organization is going to use your information. You have the right to request restrictions to that information. You have the right to define how you want to be communicated with. You have a right to the accounting of disclosures. And again, you have the right to determine who has access to your information. And if you don't want somebody to have access anymore, you can shut that off and they'll ask, but not least to get copies of your medical records. So as you can see, you have a lot of rights within HIPAA that are designed to protect you in the process. Never hesitate to ask those questions and to make sure that you're getting the support and the confidentiality that you need from your providers. If you have other questions please make sure to send those over to me. And make sure that you tell your friends about Take care. Until next time, take care.