This new and cutting edge webinar starts with the well-known basics of HIPAA privacy that should be routine for today’s medical practitioners. The rules are well-established and a part of modern medical education, training, and practice. While the basic provisions of privacy for protected health information are well known, their application for public health exceptions in today’s world is to be examined. 

What exceptions exist to allow disclosure and under what circumstances? What exceptions exist to mandate disclosure of protected health information? The world faces a possible pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus that has already hit the United States but remains contained. From the perspective of the individual health care practitioner, when a  patient who may be suspected of a communicable disease presents themselves, what privacy exists in light of public health for all of us?

This webinar examines the practical and common questions from the perspective of the health care practitioner in the United States.

HIPAA privacy has many exceptions for law enforcement purposes, and those will be reviewed and summarized, but what about civil, preventative public health purposes? 

How are public health exceptions different from law enforcement purposes? If quarantine laws may be mandatory and restrict the liberty and freedom of U.S. citizens, how do the public health exceptions for HIPAA privacy fit that protect their health information when such persons are restricted from travel and confined to specified locations for an unknown and changing duration? Public health oversight and communication allow for several public health exceptions to HIPAA privacy.

Public health exceptions to HIPAA privacy regard the many privacy rules regarding protected health information to be kept confidential and not accessible to others outside of direct patient care. Communicable diseases in a time of national crisis may involve and require disclosure of specific, protected health information that would never be released and without the consent, or even the notification of, the individual patient.

This webinar will review the top ten frequently asked questions about public health exceptions with an overview of “dos and don’ts” and “cans and can not” that the health care practitioner may have.

These involve permission/notification requirements for the patient; required public health disclosures; disclosure of name, address and social security number of the patient for public health reasons; disclosure to federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health; disclosures without patient consent for bioterrorism or other public health emergency; public health disclosure documentation in the patient record; accounting to the patient for public health disclosures; business associate rules and public health disclosures; sharing of protected health information during a declared disaster; suspension of HIPAA in a national or public health emergency.

As this webinar will show, the necessity of transmitting and reporting information to local, state, national, and even international authorities is daunting in light of a possible international pandemic of a highly communicable disease where medical privacy and HIPAA laws still exist, but with many defined exceptions.

Review the HIPAA privacy and public health exceptions in light of the COVID-19 coronavirus and the application of HIPAA privacy exceptions for public health activities that transcend local, state, national, and even international governments.

HIPAA privacy; medical records; confidentiality; public health; communicable diseases

Areas Covered    

Course Level - Advanced

Who Should Attend   

Health care attorneys; hospital directors; public health officials; emergency department workers; directors of nursing; corporate compliance officers in health care; medical records staff of medical offices and health care entities; hospital attorneys; health care practitioners who are covered entities; law enforcement officers in health care compliance; state boards and agencies with jurisdiction over state licenses to practice a health care profession

Why Should You Attend

While the basic provisions of privacy for protected health information are well known, their application for public health exceptions in today’s world facing a possible pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus must be examined from the perspective of the health care practitioner.

HIPAA privacy has many exceptions for law enforcement purposes, but what about civil, preventative public health purposes? How are these different from law enforcement purposes? If quarantine laws may be mandatory and restrict the liberty of U.S. citizens, how do the public health exceptions for HIPAA privacy fit that protect their health information when such persons are restricted from travel and confined to specified locations for an unknown and changing duration?

Many privacy rules regarding protected health information involving how and when protected health information is to be kept confidential and not accessible to others outside of direct patient care.  But what about communicable diseases in a time of national crisis?

What protected health information may a health care practitioner divulge to public health entities of a state?  Of the United States?  Or even to a foreign government?

The necessity of transmitting and reporting information to local, state, national, and even international authorities is daunting in light of a possible international pandemic of a highly communicable disease.

Erase the fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the current status of the COVID-19 coronavirus and the application of HIPAA privacy exceptions for public health activities that transcend local, state, national, and even international governments.