Re: Question for Butch and Breeze For clarification, will the HIPAA letter work for for medical collections that are yours and are already paid? For example, a collection you paid last year?
Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze Absolutely, YES-- The reason it will work is that there is NO LONGER any "reason" under HIPAA for your private information to be provided. So, if you have disputed to the CRA, and requested validation from the CA, the CA is REQUIRED by the FDCPA to obtain NEW data from the OC,--who CANNOT legally provide it under HIPAA as there is NO COLLECTION DUE. If they (the OC) do NOT provide the validation to the CA, they are subject to penalties under the FCRA for false reporting by their agent.
Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze I requested validation last year. The CA sent me a copy of the OC's statement, nothing else. Should I request validation again or go ahead and send the HIPAA letter?
Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze Have you disputed it to the CRA? If so send the HIPAA letter, (option "b" which states that the dispute has been made)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze Do NOT use the claim it was "PAID" as that nullifies the whole proccess by an admittance of the validity of the report. The FACT that it is paid creates the premise that the bill is NOT CORRECT.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze why chat, where is the HIPAA letter with option B you speak of?? Thanks.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze LETTER TO HEALTH CARE PROVIDER Letter To Health Care Providers This letter is intended for the original creditor health care provider and is designed to obtain a deletion from credit reports, and stop collection agency activity. It is NOT applicable if the account is valid and you are unable to pay it. It will ONLY work if the claim is either INACCURATE, or you remit the valid correct amount due with the letter. Please make sure that your payment is in the form of a certified check or money order, that you make a photo copy of the front and back of the remittance, that your name and address are CLEARLY printed on the remittance, that it is made to the order of THE ORIGINAL HEALTH CARE PROVIDER, and that you print or type clearly in the endorsement section "For Deposit Only to the Account of (name of H.C. provider)(This of course allows your IRS deduction as a medical expense) ___________________________________ (Your Name) (address) (City,State, zip) s.s.# (social security #) Legal Dept. ( health care provider creditor) (address) (date) Dear Sir/Madam; This letter is in reference to (account #) for services provided to (name of patient) on (date of service). The bill on this account in the amount of ($___) ( see inserts) (a) (b) or (c) Please be advised that under Federal Statutes (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq) you may be held liable for the actions of (collection agency name). "A principal may be vicariously liable for an agent's tortious conduct based upon an apparent authority theory, if the principal cloaked its agent with apparent authority, i.e., held the agent out to third parties as possessing sufficient authority to commit the particular act in question, and there was reliance upon the apparent authority." [15 U.S.C. § 1681o] (a) In general. Any person who is negligent in failing to comply with any requirement imposed under this title with respect to any consumer is liable to that consumer in an amount equal to the sum of (1) any actual damages sustained by the consumer as a result of the failure; (2) in the case of any successful action to enforce any liability under this section, the costs of the action together with reasonable attorney's fees as determined by the court. § 623. Responsibilities of furnishers of information to consumer reporting agencies [15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2] (a) Duty of furnishers of information to provide accurate information. (1) Prohibition. (A) Reporting information with actual knowledge of errors. A person shall not furnish any information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting agency if the person knows or consciously avoids knowing that the information is inaccurate. In addition, the ongoing relationship and furnishing of my account information to (collection agency name), a non business associate, not in compliance with HIPAA, and their subsequent reporting of this account on my credit reports to (credit reporting bureaus) is a clear violation of Public Law 104-191 ("HIPAA") HIPAA requires the Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") to implement safeguards to protect the security and confidentiality of health records. The Privacy Rule prohibits a covered entity from using or disclosing an individual's protected health information ("PHI") unless specifically authorized by the individual or otherwise allowed under the Privacy Rule. In general, PHI encompasses substantially all "individually identifiable health information" that is transmitted or maintained in any medium. "Individually identifiable health information" includes health information that is created or received by a health care provider, health plan, employer, or health care clearinghouse, and that relates to an individual's physical or mental health or condition, including information related to an individual's care or the payment for such care. Please be advised that I am hereby requesting you promptly rescind all such account information furnished to (collection agency) and require them to purge their records of all reference to this account, and that you insure that any and all reporting of this account is immediately deleted from my credit reports. This letter is the only notification I will provide, please respond, in writing within 10 days that you are processing this request. I hereby reserve the right, to take appropriate legal and civil action including reporting to any applicable regulatory authorities any lack of compliance with this request. I hereby waive my rights under HIPAA for the purpose of your transmission of this request and accompanying documentation in any required report to your insurance carrier. Sincerely, signature (Your Name) ____________________________________ INSERTS (insert a) Enclosed please find my remittance of ($___) for payment in full of this account. Please note, my remittance is payable ONLY to (hc provider) and may not be signed over or transferred to any third party collection agency, as this would constitute an additional violation of HIPAA. ____________________________________ (insert b) This account is in error,or was not transmitted in a timely manner to my insurance company. It is not a valid bill and has been properly disputed, therefore I request complete deletion from all your records and archives. ____________________________________ (insert c) This is not my account, it has been billed to me in error. and has been properly disputed, therefore I request complete deletion from all your records and archives.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze .............Update! Lately I've seen numerous suggestions floating around that if you "rescind" your signature on the authorization form that this somehow affects services which were performed BEFORE the signature rescission. This is not correct. You may not "cancel" your signature "after the fact" and then expect it to carry any weight. Just won't happen. On the following website we see the following dialogue concerning the same question. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/finalmaster.html Q: If an individual consents to the use or disclosure of PHI for TPO purposes, obtains a health care service, and then revokes consent before the provider bills for such service, is the provider precluded from billing for such service? A: No. A health care provider that provides a health care service to an individual after obtaining consent from the individual, may bill for such service even if the individual immediately revokes consent after the service has been provided. The Privacy Rule requires that an individual be permitted to revoke consent, but provides that the revocation is not effective to the extent that the health care provider has acted in reliance on the consent. Where the provider has obtained a consent and provided a health care service pursuant to that consent with the expectation that he or she could bill for the service, the health care provider has acted in reliance on the consent. The revocation would not interfere with the billing or reimbursement for that care. This is actually an excellent example of the Estoppel Doctrine and the Good Faith Reliance Defense. Estoppel: You made an agreement upon which the MP performed service expecting the be governed under the agreement. Therefore, you are precluded from later asserting that the agreement didn't apply to service performed under that assumption. Good Faith Reliance: In good faith the MP performed said service. Therefore, he is entitled to presume that the agreement stands in spite of your later objection. Do also note that this topic (HIPAA) is extraordinarily complex for all of us NON attys., in fact it's scary. lol We're all doing the best job we can at learning how to deal with these problems. Don't hold it against anyone who makes a mistake in this area. At least they had the testicular/ovarian fortitude to try. I profusely applaud those who've worked this area.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze Trying to make this clear for the easily confused: (that's me :O) Prior to the enactment of the minimum necessary standard: -Any information could be given to a CA, regardless of privacy Enactment of minimum necessary thru 4/14/03: -a HCP could only give a CA your name, ssn, addy, etc. NO medical codes, diagnoses, etc could be provided to them. 4/14/03 and on: -Full version of HIPAA went into efffect Is this correct? Question: what is the exact date that the minimum necesary went into effect? I have read on this board that it was sometime in 2000. However on another site that someone referenced on this board it said 4/14/01. How can I be sure which one is correct?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze What a great question Queen Bee. If you've read this thread you'd know I made reference to the exact date earlier. The problem: There are hundreds of different components attached to HIPAA. Minimum Standard is just one of them. I'm RACKING my brain trying to find in the CFR exactly where it states the effective date of the standard. So far I haven't located it. But I have done a TON of reading. Were I to hazard a guess, I'd say MIN. Standard went into effect 4/14/01. It is the "Final Rule" that took effect 4/14/03, after several clammered for an extension on certain components of HIPAA. It's the "Final Rule" that demands full and complete compliance with all of it. I've been struggling with this one too. I'm just about ready to hire an atty., and ask him/her.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question for Butch and Breeze UPDATE !!! Group sues feds over medical privacy Doctors, patients, advocates claim new rules 'threaten essential liberties' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: September 6, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34450 By Jon Dougherty © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com A group consisting of patients, doctors and privacy advocates has filed suit in federal court charging a new government rule actually "eliminates the right to privacy" of past and future communications between doctor and patient. In papers filed in U.S. district court in Philadelphia, the group â?? Citizens for Health, represented by Washington, D.C. lawyer James Pyles â?? accuses "the federal government of ignoring overwhelming public opinion to prevent the widespread use of medical records and instead implemented new regulations that threaten essential liberties guaranteed by the Constitution." Specifically, the group alleges the new rule, which was implemented under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, of 1996, eliminates medical privacy and "jeopardizes the privacy of past and future communications between patients and their physicians." Under the rule, which was implemented by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson April 14, "virtually all personal health information about every aspect of an individual's life can be used and disclosed routinely without notice, without the individual's consent and against his or her will," the group said in a statement. Some of the allegations mirror findings by the General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog agency, which reported in July the federal government could not guarantee patients' medical privacy. The GAO report found that of 25 federal agencies, compliance with Privacy Act requirements and those of the Office of Management and Budget â?? which oversees implementation of the act â?? was "uneven." "As a result of this uneven compliance, the government cannot adequately assure the public that all legislated individual privacy rights are being protected," said the agency. The privacy rule, which was under consideration during the Clinton administration, has been routinely criticized by health advocates as being too revealing of privacy, not protective of it. But that's a charge the government has just as regularly denied. "From the time of Hippocrates, privacy in medical care has been of prime importance to patients and to the medical profession," Thompson said. As electronic data transmission is becoming ingrained in our health-care system, we have new challenges to insure that medical privacy is secured. While many states have enacted laws giving differing degrees of protection, there has never before been a federal standard defining and ensuring medical privacy," he continued. "Now new federal standards are coming into force to protect the personal health information of every American patient." But critics say the government's standards aren't the problem. Rather, they say the problem is medical records are now much too easy to access by a multitude of third parties. Indeed, says the group, Health and Human Services' "own findings show that the rules affect the medical privacy rights of 'virtually every American,' and allows more than '600,000 entities' access to their records â?¦" That list includes insurance companies, banks, employers, and law enforcement agencies. Pyles initially filed suit in April, but Thursday's filing is for summary judgment. In court documents he alleged "that HHS changed the privacy requirement, even though the agency officials had received thousands of comments from citizens urging them to preserve their rights." "Further," he argued, "the amended privacy rule provides no opportunity or mechanism for individuals to object or refuse to have their personal health information used and disclosed for routine purposes repeatedly." Kathyrn Serkes, public affairs counsel for the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, said the new rules are so invasive patients will need "Miranda warnings" before answering medical questions. "While masquerading as patient protection, the rules would actually eliminate any last shred of confidentiality and risk lives," Serkes said. "The frontline defense for medical privacy always has been the patient's right to give or withhold consent to how his records are used and who sees them. These rules throw that out the window." Pyles represents 10 national and state associations, seven individuals and two "interveners," as well as 750,000 members of the associations. Among them, Dr. Deborah Peel â?? an Austin, Texas psychiatrist who has testified before Congress on the issue of medical privacy â?? says Americans should be concerned about the manner in which their rights were disregarded and their opinions discounted. "The 'HIPAA privacy rule' was turned into a massive 'disclosure rule,'" she said. Related stories: Feds slammed for not protecting privacy Critics: 'Medical privacy' rules not so private Group slams new medical privacy rule Aspects of 'HillaryCare' to become reality? Medical privacy under assault Congressman signs on to sue government Privacy rules turn doctors into criminals? Health providers sounding privacy alarm Health records of military personnel stolen .
