HIPAA Privacy Rules and Your Pregnancy Text Size:

If you haven't recently been a patient at or visited someone in a hospital, you may be surprised to find that hospital procedures have changed in recent years. In the interest of protecting patient privacy, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (known as HIPAA) has created new rules that hospitals must follow before disclosing confidential patient information. So if you're in the delivery room and your family is outside waiting for information, don't be surprised if your obstetrician first asks for your permission before sharing the good news.

HIPAA Privacy Rule

The Privacy Rule of HIPAA gives patients the following rights and health-care providers the following responsibilities:

• You have a right to see your medical records
• You may ask to have inaccurate information corrected in your records, and if you and your health-care provider disagree about the accuracy of the information, your disagreement should be noted in the records
• In most circumstances, your health information cannot be shared with others without your permission
• Your medical provider or health insurer must tell you how your health information is used, whether it's shared and with whom it is shared
• You have the right to a yearly report showing when your information was shared and why it was shared

What Do the Privacy Rules Mean?

When most people have a child, they're eager to share the good news. But under HIPAA, the disclosure of information related to your pregnancy is no different than any other medical condition. For that reason, you'll have to specifically tell the hospital - and other health care providers - what information they can and cannot release. So if you'd like a moment of peace and quiet before your more overbearing relatives show up at the hospital, you can have it!

Hospitals can maintain a patient directory that includes basic information such as your name, your location within the hospital, the phone number to your room and the general condition of your health. Because of HIPAA privacy rules, the hospital should ask:

• If you're willing to be included in the patient directory (you can opt out)
• What information you'd like released to callers
• If there are specific individuals to whom you'd like information released, or individuals to whom information should not be released

In addition, the hospital can disclose your religious affiliation to members of the clergy who are making patient visits at the hospital. You can instruct the hospital that they are not to give out this information.

Hospitals must abide by your wishes, regardless of whether you've expressed them verbally or in writing. If they fail to honor your wishes, you can file a complaint against them with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights.

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