Medical/Benefit File

scottorr

At a HIPAA training recently attended, the presenter suggested that Benefit enrollment forms were PHI and said they could be filed in the same folder as the medical file. Our VP thought this would be a great idea. I'm not so sure. Does anyone know the legality of this?

Sunny

I don't know why it would be illegal. Anyway, it's what I've been doing for a few years. It's just naturally seemed that insurance information belongs in the medical file and it's easier to access that way.

scottorr

Thank you. I just wanted to hear what others were doing. Our legal dept. asked us to hold off until they reviewed the changes. The last time they said that, we got a response a year later. Only to find out that we could have moved ahead.

Zanne

Last place I worked - we utilized one medical file that contained benefit enrollment forms. It worked really well especially when there was a benefit question.

Here, we put our enrollment forms in a binder - but we have to go through the binder periodically to take out terms. (Double work)

Zanne

Balloonman

Think about the information that is on some applications. It would tell you what illnesses an individual has had. I personally think you could learn as much about their health from a health or disability insurance app than anything else.
Medical file.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

Don D

The decision to keep "too many" things in the med file can never be illegal. It's akin to be overly cautious and the EEOC would never rule that you had been too cautious or too protective of information, whether or not it was required to be kept separate. However, benefit enrollment forms, if they give only the standard info like name and address of dependents, are not medical forms and are not PHI.

That said, I've always thought anything related to medical events, insurance or health even in a remote way should be in the med file. But the only reason is for the ease of retrieval and not having to search through multiple files for it. An enrollment form will never come into question or have need for retrieval except in one circumstance and that's as it relates to claims or coverage which relate to medical/health issues which equals the med file. You will never be told that it is illegal to keep some item in the medical file; the converse is the problem.