I work for a dental school, and our front desk staff was rude to a both me and my patient. And taking into consideration that my manager has it out for me, but knows that I'm union protected, I wrote an email to this manager and cc'd my union rep to have the incident documented. I wrote in the "subject" field as follows: "Pt: (name of patient) # (patient's chart number) and the disrespect of front desk staff, (name).
Because of this, my manager is saying that I violated HIPAA regulations, but I didn't spell out that she was a patient, nor did I state that the number was a chart. Am I screwed, or is my manager wrong??

Of course you gave patient name ( she was not there looking for a lost dog) and of course it is obvious it was a patient ID number of some sort.

The issue is, if this was a formal union complaint, are you allowed to give that information.

Of course you gave patient name ( she was not there looking for a lost dog) and of course it is obvious it was a patient ID number of some sort.

The issue is, if this was a formal union complaint, are you allowed to give that information.

It was actually both, a complaint to the providers and my union representative. The only reason why I included my union rep was because of a past incident when I called out on one of the dentists who was performing malpractice, and the manager tried to have me fired, not for the accusation ( which turned out to be true), but was the fact that I even called him out on it. Since then, the manager has been looking for anything to get me fired, so my union rep and other helpful providers recommended that I document everything and send copies to my rep. With this said, is it still a violation?

Dear Dental-Smile,
I am learning about HIPAA laws right now because of something I am working on. If you want to know for sure, call the U.S. Health and Human Resources Office of Civil Rights. However, you did not reveal any personal medical information of the patient. Your motive was customer relations and appropriate behavior toward a patient. Sounds like the manager is off base and perhaps attempting to turn it on you by diverting the original complaint submitted by you. Here's a link where you can get the phone number to the OCR in your area. Get informed and stick up for yourself with correct knowledge. Office for Civil Rights (http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/resources/laws/summaryguidance.html)
Hope that helps :-)