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Should the Herald have run the Jon Lester story?
By adamg on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 6:06pm
On Dan Shaughnessy Watch, Jenny takes time off from bashing the CHB to bashing the Herald's Tony Massarotti and whoever fed him the story about Jon Lester's enlarged lymph nodes:
... First of all, whoever leaked this information should be fired. If it was a Sox official, I want them gone. If it was a health professional, I want them gone and I want them arrested for a HIPAA violation (yes, you can be jailed for that).
And, that said, the Herald should be ashamed of themselves for such an alarmist headline followed up with almost no backing in the article. ...
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Comments
There wasn't necessarily a HIPAA violation
HIPAA only ensures that protected health information (PHI) is not disclosed.
It isn't a violation for a doctor to call someone's name in a waiting room, have a patient's name outside their door, or have a list of patients on a whiteboard in a nurse's station. A lot of facilities will make the choice to, say, only use first names, but this isn't a requirement, since a name isn't PHI.
It also isn't a HIPAA violation to wheel a patient down a hall, completely visible to anyone who happens to be in the hallway. Or for medical staff to discuss basic information about someone ("The guy in room 3 came in this morning complaining of chest pain -- had good vitals, we're sending him in for a cardio workup") in a nurse's station where they might be overheard. They can't discuss extensive medical history or any sort of concerns of a sensitive nature, but the laws don't require that you go behind closed doors any time you're talking about a person. It really gets in the way of doing your job efficiently if you can't shout across the hall "yeah, it came back fine, so let's start with 2mg."
Any number of patients or their family members could have seen his name, wondered if it was in fact him, watched who got wheeled in and out of the room, and listened to hear what the staff had to say about him.
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