Compliance and Quality Improvement
The Privacy Officer's job is to protect the patient's personal health information by making sure that our hospital has processes in place that conscientiously address that issue. Sometimes that is very difficult in a small community hospital where lots of people know each other and/or related.
We give every patient admitted to the hospital the opportunity to be a "restricted" admission. This means that the patient's name will not appear on our list of patients at our front desks, that telephone calls for the patient cannot be forwarded to the room, that flowers cannot be delivered to the patient's room. We have trained our staff to respect the patient's wishes for privacy. Therefore, you may ask about a patient from one or our staff members and be directed to the front desks for information, just in case that patient has asked for his/her admission to be private. Or, you may call the hospital and ask where a patient has been transferred and be told that all we can say is that the patient has been discharged and instruct you to get in touch with the patient's family for more information.
With the increased popularity of computers used in our daily lives, increased emphasis is being placed on the importance of passwords and firewall protection from outside entry into our electronic medical records system.
Patient privacy is taken very seriously by the state and federal government and violation of these laws can come with a hefty fine and, for criminal offenses, imprisonment. We at Ashe Memorial Hospital believe it is or ethical duty as well as our legal responsibility to protect your health information. If you have questions about the privacy of your information, please feel free to call me or come by my office.
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