Our partner Elizabeth Litten and I were featured again by our good friend Marla Durben Hirsch in her article in the April 2016 issue of Medical Practice Compliance Alert entitled “5 safeguards to take with patient-employee health records.” Full text can be found in the April, 2016 issue, but a synopsis is below.

For her article, Marla asked us to comment about physician medical practices that provide medical treatment to their own employees and other staff or affiliates (collectively, “Patient-Employees”). She observed that “These medical records [of Patient-Employees] are not fair game for colleagues to view unless there’s a job-related reason for them to do so.”

Marla quoted Kline as saying that “It’s human nature to talk about others [that you know]. You also have rogue employees who are ‘frenemies’ [Or simply curious about a co-worker’s treatment].” Nonetheless, as Marla observed, events of improper access are not just potential HIPAA violations; they can also have a negative impact on the workplace.

Our five tips for reducing the risks of improper breaches of Patient-Employees’ health information that were developed with Marla follow:

Litten: Include employee privacy in your HIPAA education. “This is a topic for specific training.” For example, make sure that everyone in the office knows the practice’s HIPAA policies and procedures, and that all patients, even those who are employees are entitled to their privacy rights. Emphasize the fact that employees should only review records when it is necessary to do their job.

Kline: Limit access to the records. “For instance, not all employees need unfettered access to electronic medical records, so different staff members can have different levels of access.    Human resources shouldn’t be able to find out that an employee came in for [medical] help.”

Litten and Kline: Take consistent disciplinary action when warranted. An employee may need to be retrained, disciplined or even fired, and treat all workforce members the same, whether licensed professionals or other staff.

Litten: Require staff to report these kinds of breaches. “At the least the practice can argue that the employee had an obligation to report, and by not doing so the fault lay with the employee, not the employer.”

Litten and Kline: Don’t let Patient-Employees take shortcuts to access their records. All patients are entitled to access their records; Patient-Employees should be required to go through the same procedures to access their records as any non-Patient-Employee.

In this ever more-challenging environment of compliance with the privacy and security requirements of HIPAA (and other applicable federal and state laws), a health care provider should limit the risks appurtenant to providing treatment to its own employees as patients, especially since it may be an economical and efficient alternative. There are enough external risks lurking about. Through establishing discrete policies and procedures, a provider can do much to control its internal risks involving Patient-Employees.