Recorded presentation

Brian J. Balicki, MHS, Social and Health Services, Ltd., a division of ORC Macro, 11426 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852, 301-770-5800 (396), bbalicki@shs.net and Robin Frazier Kandel, JD, Attorney and Assistant Director for Legal Affairs, Social and Health Services, Ltd., a Division of ORC Macro, 11426 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852.

Public health institutions tend to under-emphasize, if not overlook altogether, numerous ethics requirements of health privacy laws. This oversight poses severe risks for institutions and their staff --- from institution-wide penalties for non-compliance and program sanctions, to ethics violations for individual professional staff. Industry data suggests organizations under-value these risks.

Existing privacy laws generally prohibit use and disclosure of personal health information PHI), except as otherwise recognized in the regulations. Even when programs are permitted to legally share PHI, statutes technically permit these actions to be challenged on ethical grounds under at least 15 separate provisions of HIPAA alone, and 5 others under the confidentiality regulations protecting Federal substance abuse patients. This occurs when decisions fail to use logical, current or relevant standards of professional judgment, in cases where sharing was either permitted, mandated, or exceeded “minimally necessary” standards for determining how much information to disclose.

Effective, informed and practical strategies for compliance with these privacy issues requires leadership by CEOs, privacy officers, and boards of directors. The session concludes by defining a strategy for integrating statutory (Federal), professional and personal ethical standards.

Learning Objectives:

• 1)Recognize numerous ethics requirements within Federal health privacy laws, and standards within professional codes of ethics and best practices.
• 2)Learn how lack of staff training on “privacy ethics” poses risks to institutions for penalties for non-compliance, and to individual professionals for ethics violations.
• 3)Highlight the leadership roles required by executive officers, privacy officers and boards of directors to insure compliance with ethics requirements of privacy laws.
• 4)Construct an organizational “mapping” strategy for meeting ethics requirements

Keywords: Ethics Training, Leadership

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: This work is being conducted under contract to the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, DHHS, Washington, DC, Contract #270-03-7112

Recorded presentation