HIPAA Q&A
[Editor’s note: This is a periodic columns that addresses specific questions related to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) implementation. If you have questions, please send them to Sheryl Jackson, Hospital Home Health, American Health Consultants, P.O. Box 740056, Atlanta, GA 30374. Fax: (404) 262-5447. E-mail: [email protected].]
Question: Does the signed acknowledgement of notification of privacy rights have to be a separate form?
Answer: "Home health agencies are extremely concerned about the amount of paperwork that patients must review, and in some cases, sign, especially during the initial or admission visit. Agency staff members are acutely aware that patients and/or their family members often are ill, tired, in pain, afraid, and worried during the initial visit," says Elizabeth E. Hogue, Esq., a home health attorney in Burtonsville, MD. This means that reviewing and signing multiple forms is quite burdensome to many patients, she adds.
The revisions to the final privacy regulations of HIPAA generally require patients to sign an acknowledgement that they have received an agency’s notice of privacy rights at the first service delivery, Hogue points out. Because this is yet another form that patients must sign upon admission, many agency managers would like to include the acknowledgement along with other consent forms so that patients only have to sign once, she says. As long as your process is consistent with the final privacy regulations, you may include the acknowledgement required by HIPAA in a form along with other items, she says.
Here is what the revisions to final regulations published in the Federal Register Aug. 14, 2002, say on this subject:
"The department also agreed with commenters that the notice acknowledgement process must be flexible and provide covered entities with discretion in order to be workable. . . . The rule requires only that the acknowledgement be in writing and does not prescribe other details such as the form that the acknowledgment must take or the process for obtaining the acknowledgment.
"For example, the final rule does not require an individual’s signature to be on the notice. Instead, a covered health provider is permitted, for example, to have the individual sign a separate sheet or list, or to simply initial a cover sheet of the notice to be retained by the provider. . . . In addition, those covered health care providers that choose to obtain consent from an individual may design one form that includes both a consent and the acknowledgement of receipt of the notice.
"Covered health care providers are provided discretion to design the acknowledgement process best suited to their practices."
Question: Does the signed acknowledgement of notification of privacy rights have to be a separate form?You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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