Brewer man removed from home after feces found; structure condemned

I just completed a 16-week long, in-depth course on Medical, Laws and Ethics. That’s how I know the HIPAA laws.

While I don’t have hands on my textbook (published last year, so very up to date) to be able to give you direct quotes, I did a quick internet search on the law. Here is a government run site that has documentation about who is required to comply with HIPAA. Please show me yours that says firefighters are required to comply.

 http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/index.html

Who is Covered by the Privacy Rule
The Privacy Rule, as
well as all the Administrative Simplification rules, apply to health
plans, health care clearinghouses, and to any health care provider who
transmits health information in electronic form in connection with
transactions for which the Secretary of HHS has adopted standards under
HIPAA (the “covered entities”). For help in determining whether you are covered, use CMS’s decision tool.
Health Plans. Individual and group plans that provide or pay the cost of medical care are covered entities.4
Health plans include health, dental, vision, and prescription drug
insurers, health maintenance organizations (“HMOs”), Medicare, Medicaid,
Medicare+Choice and Medicare supplement insurers, and long-term care
insurers (excluding nursing home fixed-indemnity policies). Health plans
also include employer-sponsored group health plans, government and
church-sponsored health plans, and multi-employer health plans. There
are exceptions—a group health plan with less than 50 participants that
is administered solely by the employer that established and maintains
the plan is not a covered entity. Two types of government-funded
programs are not health plans: (1) those whose principal purpose is not
providing or paying the cost of health care, such as the food stamps
program; and (2) those programs whose principal activity is directly
providing health care, such as a community health center,5 or
the making of grants to fund the direct provision of health care.
Certain types of insurance entities are also not health plans, including
entities providing only workers’ compensation, automobile insurance,
and property and casualty insurance. If an insurance entity has
separable lines of business, one of which is a health plan, the HIPAA
regulations apply to the entity with respect to the health plan line of
business.
Health Care Providers. Every health care
provider, regardless of size, who electronically transmits health
information in connection with certain transactions, is a covered
entity. These transactions include claims, benefit eligibility
inquiries, referral authorization requests, or other transactions for
which HHS has established standards under the HIPAA Transactions Rule.6
Using electronic technology, such as email, does not mean a health care
provider is a covered entity; the transmission must be in connection
with a standard transaction. The Privacy Rule covers a health care
provider whether it electronically transmits these transactions directly
or uses a billing service or other third party to do so on its behalf.
Health care providers include all “providers of services” (e.g.,
institutional providers such as hospitals) and “providers of medical or
health services” (e.g., non-institutional providers such as physicians,
dentists and other practitioners) as defined by Medicare, and any other
person or organization that furnishes, bills, or is paid for health
care.
Health Care Clearinghouses. Health care clearinghouses
are entities that process nonstandard information they receive from
another entity into a standard (i.e., standard format or data content),
or vice versa.7 In most instances, health care clearinghouses
will receive individually identifiable health information only when
they are providing these processing services to a health plan or health
care provider as a business associate. In such instances, only certain
provisions of the Privacy Rule are applicable to the health care
clearinghouse’s uses and disclosures of protected health information.8
Health care clearinghouses include billing services, repricing
companies, community health management information systems, and
value-added networks and switches if these entities perform
clearinghouse functions.

 Yes, I did think of the Firefighter/EMT crossover after posting.

I work nights, and had just woken up when posting. I’m human, as you are, and things slip my mind. It doesn’t mean you need to berate me for it.

 I’m sure the information was gathered through PRCC or who ever dispatched the fire dept to that address. That is public record. Anyone that has a scanner can hear the addresses of where police, fire and ambulances are sent. They also can hear the ambulance calling the hospital and giving info about the patient to the ER. Anything broadcast on the airwaves is public information….