Legal Marketing & PR

HIPAA HIPAA Hooray

By Mark Merenda

    If you practice estate planning or elder law, you should order some reprints of today’s front page article in The New York Times. (Registration may be required.)
    The article makes it clear that unless your mom and dad have a health care directive and other instruments as part of their estate plan, you may be out of luck when you try to get information about their medical condition or treatment.
    According the article, "new studies have found that some health care providers apply Hipaa
regulations overzealously, leaving family members, caretakers, public
health and law enforcement authorities stymied in their efforts to get
information." The story details horror stories ranging from the ridiculous (canceling patient birthday parties because it would disclose their age) to the frightening (a nurse threatens a man with arrest for scanning his
relative?s medical chart to prove to her that she was about to
administer a dangerous second round of sedatives).
    A good article to pass out at seminars, or mail out to your client list.

Full post as published by Mark Merenda’s SmartBlog on July 04, 2007 (boomark / email).