Who has access to medical records when treating hospital staff?
Question: You are an orthopedic surgeon at a hospital. Your secretary is an inpatient following exploratory surgery. She has asked you to check in on her. When you finish doing rounds in ortho, you go up to your secretary’s room to visit her. She has not awakened from the procedure at this point. You go out to the nurses’ station and pull her chart. This is allowed because you have privileges at the hospital. True or false? Answer: False. Just because your secretary has asked you to check in, that does not give you special access to her chart. In order to look at a patient’s chart for which you are not part of the treatment team or servicing the patient as part of your job responsibility, you need a written authorization signed by the patient. This authorization gives you the right to review her protected health information. Without this written authorization, you have no access, and you shouldn’t put staff on the unit in a position to have to point this out. Question: You need to cont
