Medical records are the key to your mental and physical health. PHI is to be protected at all costs, but there may be times when it will have to be made available for medical record review.

2. http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809
Medical Record Review for a Better
Cause and the Privacy Factor
Medical records are the key to your mental and physical
health. PHI is to be protected at all costs, but there may be
times when it will have to be made available for medical
record review.
Medical records are the key to the actual mental and
physical health of a person. While it is true that healthcare
information is to be protected
at all costs, there may be
occasions when these
documents will have to be
made available to authorities.
HIPAA is supposed to
protect PHI, but there are
numerous exceptions that
may lead to breaches. Studies
show that in many of the breaches that occur there is little
that a person can do to prevent the theft of personal data.
The Privacy Rights Clearing House highlights the
following facts on its website.
• HIPAA is applicable only to covered entities –
healthcare providers, healthcare clearing houses and
health plans.
http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809

3. http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809
• Personal health records (PHR) offered by your
employer are not covered by HIPAA.
• PHRs from commercial vendors such as mobile
medical application vendors are not covered by
HIPAA rules. However, healthcare providers will have
to obtain a written authorization from the patient
before making the medical records available to a PHR
vendor.
• If a breach of unsecured health information occurs, the
PHR vendor or a business that offers products and
services via the vendor’s website will be held liable. If
the breach involves 500 or more individuals, the
vendor/business must notify the affected individuals
and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). The FTC
rules do not however, allow individuals the right to
sue a PHR vendor for a breach of healthcare
information. Some states such as California do give
this right to individuals.
• Information regarding the healthcare sought by you
may be included in your credit card account and
checking transactions. Other sources which may
contain your personal health details are insurance
applications and medical claims. Similarly, children’s
education records contain their healthcare information.
Employment records may also contain medical
information. This info is not protected by HIPAA.
http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809

4. http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809
There may be times when the medical records of an
individual are used by authorities for investigative purposes
as in the following instance.
The Montana Suicide Review and the Privacy
Concern
Montana is reported to have the third highest suicide rate in
the United States according to a 2010 report. A state law
has now allowed a team to perform a detailed medical
review to identify the reason for this alarming trend.
According to a recent news article, Montana’s Suicide
Prevention Coordinator and his team are preparing to look
at all suicides starting January 1st
of 2014. The team of six
professionals will meet at least 8 times a year to identify
patterns in the medical records of people who have
committed suicide. Their attempt will be to gather data and
provide recommendations that will help lower suicide rates.
However, this step has not received the approval of all;
many individuals hold the view that this law violates
privacy rights. What is not agreeable to the opponents of
this law is the fact that the review team does not have to
ask permission to look into the medical records or talk to
the doctors of the deceased, though any objection raised by
a family will be taken into consideration.
The team hopes to unearth helpful details from the records
such as depression, various levels of depression, the
treatment provided/not provided and so on. The alarming
http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809

5. http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809
thing is that Montana has one of the highest suicide rates in
the United States, and has remained so for almost 100
years. The state has been among the top 5 for the last forty
years. The medical review team firmly believes that a
detailed medical record or chart review is the key to
finding out effective means of significantly bringing down
the rate of suicide.
Medical records are indeed storehouses of important data
and have a medical and legal value. In many instances, PHI
may have to be revealed to serve a better cause. We can
expect that the authorities handling these documents will do
all that they can to protect the sensitive health information,
providing peace of mind to the concerned individuals and
their families.
http://www.mosmedicalrecordreview.com/ 1­800­670­2809