And By The Way It's HIPAA Not HIPPA

I'm finally finished drafting a privacy statement regarding my blog. I've been researching and writing it on and off for a few weeks now. I'm curious what you think.

Believe it or not, the law does not have a lot to say about blogging and patient privacy. Because HIPAA is about privacy from a business point of view, it deals more with clinical record-keeping, insurance payments, and whether you, as a working medical professional, are accessing the correct records at work. It has little to say about what you, as a professional, write about on your days off.

But I ran across this interesting quote (which I put in my statement):

There are no restrictions on the use or disclosure of de-identified health information. De-identified health information neither identifies nor provides a reasonable basis to identify an individual. ...the removal of specified identifiers of the individual and of the individual’s relatives, household members, and employers is required, and is adequate only if the covered entity has no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used to identify the individual.

I like to think that my blog goes above and beyond this. I think that, even without identifiers, I wouldn't want to see my entire health story displayed for the world to see by some blogging nurse or physician who, say, thought I was annoying or bizarre.

I don't want to get all preachy and moralistic, but I think that in anything you you write about a particular patient, you should ask yourself, is this edifying? Does it help anybody? Is it interesting, or is it just gossip or voyeurism? If my coworkers or the patient saw this, even if they were assured of their privacy, would they be happy in how I depicted them? Etc.

Any thoughts? Or criticism of what I say on my privacy page?

Read the Privacy Statement and Disclaimer here.