HIPAA Compliance
Obliterate Patient Identifiable Labels on IV Bags
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information states that all health care providers are to:
“Protect the information from use or disclosure to those not allowed to see it by law or by the patient, and to properly dispose of this information.”
Recently, the topic of how to dispose of IV bags with patient identifiers on the labels in an efficient and HIPAA-compliant manner has been explored so that bags are not disposed of in regular trash bins with the patient identifiable label still attached. These labels contain Protected Health Information or PHI, and throwing them in regular trash bins compromises patient privacy and is a HIPAA violation.
At BWH, most regular trash is taken to an outside facility to be incinerated and used for energy purposes and about 20 percent of trash is taken to a landfill. If identifiable PHI remains on any disposed bags, that information could be discerned by a number of people during the course of waste disposal.
Pharmacy is looking into a long term solution for the proper disposal of all IV drug bags and any identifying patient information that may be attached to them. Health Information Services met with the Quality, Safety & Care Improvement Committee to obtain their input on a short term solution for the proper disposal of IV drug bag labels.
The Committee recommends the following options:
- Use a black magic marker to obliterate identifiable information on the IV bag label before throwing it out
- Remove label from the IV bag prior to throwing it out and destroy or place label in shredding bin
- Nursing staff are asked to use one of these options. If you have any questions, contact the nurse manager on your floor and/or the HIPAA Compliance Project Manager at 617-582-5201.
- BWH Nurse will update the Pharmacy’s efforts to find a more efficient solution for this issue.