CDL & HIPA

crook county road

In compliance to a law from federal Highway our commerical drivers are required to have a medical examination showing they are fit for duty to drive vehicles that require commerical driver licenses. As a benefit we pay for their exams. The employees are instructed to have the clinic bill our account for the visit. I post the invoice for payment from the medical clinic which has the employee's name and the cpt code for commerical drivers physical exam. No other information is on the invoice. This question is. Is this a HIPA violation?

Thank you so much.

Hunter1

The question is: Why do you post it? The employee is either certified by the physician or not, and you must receive that report, correct?

POPEYE

This would not be in violation of the HIPAA law. As with pre-employment physicals and or drug screens, as long as it is not a medical procedure and there is no PHI included you have no concerns. I would recommend to keep any paperwork associated with the physicals in a medical file.

I assumed from your first posting that when you referred to "Post the invoice" you were speaking in accounting terms and not physically placing it on a bulletin board. Only those that have a need to know should be aware of the results.

WOCO Frank

>>I assumed from your first posting that when you referred to "Post the invoice" you were speaking in accounting terms and not physically placing it on a bulletin board. Only those that have a need to know should be aware of the results. <<

I hadn't thought of that "post". I had flashbacks to publicly posted grades from final exams...

Pork

Based on your post the response to your concern is NO! We HRs are making a mountain out of a mole hill with the HIPAA. Medical information and privacy of that information is the issue. Accounting information, regardless of the orignation from a medical authority, is handled based on "accepted and standard accounting practices"; should it be that the physician's office that sent you an invoice with the fact that "JOE SMOUK" or "SUZY QUE" had a physical exam on 5/23/2003 coded as CDL/PHY 0023 you are not concerned for the HIPAA concerns.

Now, if the physician's office manager sends you the physical exam document, attached as proof of the charge, then you are wise to pull off the physical exam portion and give it to the record keeper of the CDL files. Don't read the details of the physical exam for you do not have a need to know, tell your HR about the incident so that he can alert the physician's office of the need for training on the handling of the paper trail of these type of services.

PORK