as a supervisor in Texas I recently had an employee call in. while speaking to another employee about getting coverage I was asked if he had the flu since we had so many people call in with that. I said no he has ...... I thought nothing of it since it wasn't something embarrassing. Now I am being called into HR and have been told by other staff members that he is talking about suing me. Have I left myself open to a law suite?

J_9

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Basically it is the doctor/patient privilege we all hear about.

It deals specifically with the health care providers (doctor, nurse, medical coder, medical biller, etc) keeping the patient's information private.

You may have violated an ethical policy with your company, but if you are not a doctor, nor were involved in the care of the employee, you did not violate HIPAA.

ScottGem

Well first this is not a HIPAA violation. You were not a medical care provider, so you were not covered by HIPAA.

You did however, commit a possible breach of ethics. However, this is really stretching things a bit. Did he volunteer his diagnosis or did you ask? If he did volunteer it and didn not request confidentiality, they a judge would probably rule that he had no expectation of confidentialty. On the other hand, if you asked or the company policy required it, then there would be an expectation of confidentiality.

What has your company's attorneys said? I doubt if he would sue you alone. If he were he would have to show how he was damaged by your revalation.

Fr_Chuck

There are, don't know where to find them any longer" a long list of rules on employee medcial records, they can not be keep in the same folder as thier perosnell records, there has to be a list of what employees have access to it and so on. If a supervisor gives out medical information, such as why they are out, it is a violateion of some federal law, sorry not up on which one any longer, but when I was in the corporate world, we had hours and hours of training on this.