Teaching HIPAA with a Seinfeld clip
Last Tuesday I testified at a policy meeting in Washington. One point that came up was the frequent wrong impressions patients encounter among medical staff regarding medical records. The truth is, you’re entitled to a copy of your medical records. Don’t let anyone tell you “That’s not our policy”!
We also discussed how useful it would be if we had some quick, informative, entertaining training tools to convey points like that.
Well, why wait for an act of Congress? I made one up. Click to view, print, or download the full page PDF (413k).
Share freely.
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Trivia:
- The clip in this flyer is from Seinfeld episode #139, “The Package.” It was first broadcast on October 17, 1996, eight weeks after HIPAA was signed into law.
- Your right to your records is specified not in the law itself, but in the regulations that were written by the Executive Branch to implement the law. (That’s what regulators do: they write the regulations.)
- So when this episode aired, Elaine was not entitled to her record. Today she would be.