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                              FAQ
                              205-Does HIPAA permit certain incidental uses and disclosures only in treatment situations or discussions among health care providers


    

    

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Do the HIPAA Privacy Rule's provisions permitting certain incidental uses and disclosures apply only to treatment situations or discussions among health care providers?








  
  
    

  
      





Answer:

No. The provisions apply universally to incidental uses and disclosures that result from any use or disclosure permitted under the Privacy Rule, and not just to incidental uses and disclosures resulting from treatment communications, or only to communications among health care providers or other medical staff. For example:

A provider may instruct an administrative staff member to bill a patient for a particular procedure, and may be overheard by one or more persons in the waiting room.
	A health plan employee discussing a patient’s health care claim on the phone may be overheard by another employee who is not authorized to handle patient information.If the provider and the health plan employee made reasonable efforts to avoid being overheard and reasonably limited the information shared, an incidental use or disclosure resulting from such conversations would be permissible under the Rule.

Date Created: 12/19/2002
Last Updated: 03/14/2006

                    
  


Content created by Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Content last reviewed January 9, 2023Back to top
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