Coronavirus prep
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missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.5 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »Saw this while working this morning. Looks interesting. They are looking at it coupled with Remdesivir as an antiviral therapeutic.
https://www.folio.ca/antiviral-used-to-treat-cat-coronavirus-also-works-against-sars-cov-2-u-of-a-researchers/
Remdisivir seems to have limited treatment profile, not very good for early infections. Desamethasone seems to be doing better.
COVID-19 Treatments: Remdesivir Disappoints, Antiviral SPL7013 And Monoclonal Antibodies Interesting For Prevention/Early-Stage Treatment
https://seekingalpha.com/article/43711552 -
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-27/covid-pandemic-u-s-businesses-issue-gag-rules-to-stop-workers-from-talking?utm_source=url_link
Here is the link to the story. Towards the end of the article it refers to HIPAA. Companies are trying to prevent employees from talking about Covid cases of infected employees because of what the employer claims are privacy/confidential issues. Legal or not, employers have been getting away with this. Many thousands of complaints have been filed with OSHA, and State Agencies. Understaffed agencies to investigate allegations.
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SMH a member of my family drives for miles to a laundromat because they deem it safer; our numbers are very low to begin with(we're lucky!). BUT they're going to a concert located in a place with much higher numbers.
Okaayyyy....
If that person mentioned above were a caregiver to an elderly very compromised relative, would you not allow them to come into contact for the 14 day period after the concert?
On an uplifting note today, I noticed at the grocery store they've got someone stationed by the carts checking people for masks. I've very glad BUT I do hope nobody gives her trouble about it.
My mom is 82 and in good health, but she is not allowing anyone but me and my sister in the house.
Normally, she has a lot of guests in the summer but this year some of them are staying in a rental down the road, and she is only visiting with them outside, at least 6 feet away, and one couple also worn masks when they visited.
So no, I would not let the concert attendee near the elderly person for two weeks, and I would want a negative test result as well.8 -
missysippy930 wrote: »https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-27/covid-pandemic-u-s-businesses-issue-gag-rules-to-stop-workers-from-talking?utm_source=url_link
Here is the link to the story. Towards the end of the article it refers to HIPAA. Companies are trying to prevent employees from talking about Covid cases of infected employees because of what the employer claims are privacy/confidential issues. Legal or not, employers have been getting away with this. Many thousands of complaints have been filed with OSHA, and State Agencies. Understaffed agencies to investigate allegations.
I think employers are being deliberately obtuse about what HIPAA regulates, assuming employees don't know and won't look it up.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-27/covid-pandemic-u-s-businesses-issue-gag-rules-to-stop-workers-from-talking
In many cases, workers say their bosses have cited employee privacy to justify the gags, including federal privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. But such laws don’t require companies to silence employees on safety matters.
On the contrary, federal laws, including those that created OSHA and the NLRB, guarantee employees the right to communicate about and protest their job conditions.
The federal bodies have failed to make companies obey the law. Many thousands of OSHA complaints about coronavirus safety issues have yielded citations against just two companies—a health-care company and a nursing home—totaling about $47,000.3 -
missysippy930 wrote: »https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-27/covid-pandemic-u-s-businesses-issue-gag-rules-to-stop-workers-from-talking?utm_source=url_link
Here is the link to the story. Towards the end of the article it refers to HIPAA. Companies are trying to prevent employees from talking about Covid cases of infected employees because of what the employer claims are privacy/confidential issues. Legal or not, employers have been getting away with this. Many thousands of complaints have been filed with OSHA, and State Agencies. Understaffed agencies to investigate allegations.
The HIPAA mention in the article is fairly lukewarm. Reading it, I think this is more of a "work rules" issue.
IMU, employers can impose a surprising variety of rules on employees, including rules about what they may do in their private lives, and treat those as firing offences. I suspect it's possible that employers' "rights" in that regard may have weakened since I was involved with that sort of thing in my employment, but I don't know to what extent. Of course, what's legal, and what employers get away with, or try to get away with, are different things.
Perhaps one of our attorneys or HR professionals here will offer their more informed opinion about the permissible scope of employment rules that can be imposed on employees, and be firing offenses, these days - preferably someone in the US, since that's the context we're discussing.
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missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
I think if your employer "self-insures" to cover medical care for employees that they would be a covered entity (i.e., they don't provide medical insurance through an insurance company but instead pay claims for employees' medical services directly out of the company's pocket, and thus would be seeing the claims and listed services). I've never actually known of a company that did that, but it's a theoretical possibility.
Even before this crisis, I heard anecdotes of companies' using HIPAA as a reason not to be transparent about health risks to employees or customers. You already used the language I would have chosen (ridiculous BS), but you get extra points for "howlingly".
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missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
On the related subject of people claiming that HIPAA and the ADA give them the right to not wear a mask if they claim a disability, with such individuals often claiming it is illegal to even ask what the disability is.
The ADA has issued a statement which says that a business can indeed ask what the disability is for the purpose of making reasonable accommodations (for example, someone with a breathing issue would need different accommodations from someone who gets panic attacks when their face is covered or someone who needs to see lips to sight-read) and that in any case “reasonable accommodations” doesn’t mean you get to not wear a mask. An example of reasonable accommodations might include curb-side pickup, or having someone shop for you, or wearing a face shield instead of a mask. It never means the disabled person just gets to ignore the rule and endanger others.8 -
rheddmobile wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
On the related subject of people claiming that HIPAA and the ADA give them the right to not wear a mask if they claim a disability, with such individuals often claiming it is illegal to even ask what the disability is.
The ADA has issued a statement which says that a business can indeed ask what the disability is for the purpose of making reasonable accommodations (for example, someone with a breathing issue would need different accommodations from someone who gets panic attacks when their face is covered or someone who needs to see lips to sight-read) and that in any case “reasonable accommodations” doesn’t mean you get to not wear a mask. An example of reasonable accommodations might include curb-side pickup, or having someone shop for you, or wearing a face shield instead of a mask. It never means the disabled person just gets to ignore the rule and endanger others.
Yes, there is an employee at my Walmart with a disability who wears a shield instead of a mask.2 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
I think if your employer "self-insures" to cover medical care for employees that they would be a covered entity (i.e., they don't provide medical insurance through an insurance company but instead pay claims for employees' medical services directly out of the company's pocket, and thus would be seeing the claims and listed services). I've never actually known of a company that did that, but it's a theoretical possibility.
Even before this crisis, I heard anecdotes of companies' using HIPAA as a reason not to be transparent about health risks to employees or customers. You already used the language I would have chosen (ridiculous BS), but you get extra points for "howlingly".
FWIW, my "company" (a university) self insured. But - and I think this is common, maybe not universal - they used a health insurance company as an intermediary. The university paid the claims costs (and presumably some administrative fees, though I never read the contract), but the intermediary dealt with all the billing, medical billing codes, co-pays, provider network to the extent applicable, and all that specialized stuff. The U considered it financially advantageous to assume the risks (of fluctuating health costs, vs. paying a standard amount per employee for regular insurance, which transfers the risk to the insurance company), but the U didn't want to add the administrative complexity of handling all the billing details.
In that "self insured" scenario, the university was *not* a covered entity, even for most/all of what was involved on our side of the administrative processes. Obviously, this is very situation specific, so I can't speak for other scenarios' details. I did become aware of some other institutions who were also using 3rd party administrators/intermediaries in a similar way, but had no reason to look into wildly different cases.
The extent to which the U was a covered entity turned out to be much narrower than we had originally expected. Mostly, it was the clinical centers associated with the med schools, their pharmacies and similar health care support functions, and the student health center (basically a clinic).1 -
I've yet to eat at a restaurant since the outbreak, and was interested to learn this Boston restaurateur feels the same.
Chef Ming Tsai: Gathering At Restaurants 'Unconscionable' During Pandemic
...I don't understand how people are gathering. I was reading the Globe and seeing there's a Chinese restaurant, there's 100 people at this restaurant, there's a secret underground bar. I just don't understand what these people are doing, because if we can't stop this virus, 80 [to] 85 percent of independent restaurants are going to be gone forever. And that's a big deal, Joe. We're talking about tens of millions of people without a job, without another job to go to. I remember we talked about 9/11. 9/11 was horrible, but if you moved out of New York, you could get a job somewhere else. There are no restaurant jobs, and the selfishness of people gathering because they want to have fun is unconscionable, in my opinion. Just unconscionable.
Read more: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/08/14/chef-ming-tsai-gathering-at-restaurants-unconscionable-during-pandemic11 -
Had a COVID19 reality this week.
My wife had a medical procedure today. Preparation in the preceding days involved having a COVID19 test - no one can enter our hospitals without being tested first. I went with her, but watched from outside the door. She enjoyed that, and the doctor said she got an A+ for the way she took that thing in her nose and her throat.
At the hospital today, no one allowed inside apart from the patient. She's been there before and I'd usually go with her to the room and through all the preparations until she's actually wheeled into the operating theater. Not so with COVID19 around. So they quite nicely asked me to go home and wait for a call. On my return they pushed her out to the car, instead of me going in to bring her out like previous times.
Certainly the "new normal".17 -
Had a COVID19 reality this week.
My wife had a medical procedure today. Preparation in the preceding days involved having a COVID19 test - no one can enter our hospitals without being tested first. I went with her, but watched from outside the door. She enjoyed that, and the doctor said she got an A+ for the way she took that thing in her nose and her throat.
At the hospital today, no one allowed inside apart from the patient. She's been there before and I'd usually go with her to the room and through all the preparations until she's actually wheeled into the operating theater. Not so with COVID19 around. So they quite nicely asked me to go home and wait for a call. On my return they pushed her out to the car, instead of me going in to bring her out like previous times.
Certainly the "new normal".
I hate the new normal for stuff like this - I had a routine procedure done 2 weeks ago and I missed having my husband by my side...9 -
rheddmobile wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
On the related subject of people claiming that HIPAA and the ADA give them the right to not wear a mask if they claim a disability, with such individuals often claiming it is illegal to even ask what the disability is.
The ADA has issued a statement which says that a business can indeed ask what the disability is for the purpose of making reasonable accommodations (for example, someone with a breathing issue would need different accommodations from someone who gets panic attacks when their face is covered or someone who needs to see lips to sight-read) and that in any case “reasonable accommodations” doesn’t mean you get to not wear a mask. An example of reasonable accommodations might include curb-side pickup, or having someone shop for you, or wearing a face shield instead of a mask. It never means the disabled person just gets to ignore the rule and endanger others.
Unless you're talking about the American Dental Association, the ADA is a piece of legislation (the Americans with Disabilities Act), and I don't understand how a piece of legislation can issue a statement.1 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
I think if your employer "self-insures" to cover medical care for employees that they would be a covered entity (i.e., they don't provide medical insurance through an insurance company but instead pay claims for employees' medical services directly out of the company's pocket, and thus would be seeing the claims and listed services). I've never actually known of a company that did that, but it's a theoretical possibility.
Even before this crisis, I heard anecdotes of companies' using HIPAA as a reason not to be transparent about health risks to employees or customers. You already used the language I would have chosen (ridiculous BS), but you get extra points for "howlingly".
FWIW, my "company" (a university) self insured. But - and I think this is common, maybe not universal - they used a health insurance company as an intermediary. The university paid the claims costs (and presumably some administrative fees, though I never read the contract), but the intermediary dealt with all the billing, medical billing codes, co-pays, provider network to the extent applicable, and all that specialized stuff. The U considered it financially advantageous to assume the risks (of fluctuating health costs, vs. paying a standard amount per employee for regular insurance, which transfers the risk to the insurance company), but the U didn't want to add the administrative complexity of handling all the billing details.
In that "self insured" scenario, the university was *not* a covered entity, even for most/all of what was involved on our side of the administrative processes. Obviously, this is very situation specific, so I can't speak for other scenarios' details. I did become aware of some other institutions who were also using 3rd party administrators/intermediaries in a similar way, but had no reason to look into wildly different cases.
The extent to which the U was a covered entity turned out to be much narrower than we had originally expected. Mostly, it was the clinical centers associated with the med schools, their pharmacies and similar health care support functions, and the student health center (basically a clinic).
I hadn't considered a situation in which the employer outsourced the administration of the plan and was only financially responsible, although I see how that makes sense. As I said, I've never actually encountered an entity that self-insured. I don't think I would want to work for one, as the pool would be so small that I would be afraid a couple of statistical anomalies in terms of catastrophic events would bankrupt the system. That's interesting. Was it a private or a public university?0 -
So much for heard immunity
Doctors find possible case of Covid-19 reinfection in US
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/health/covid-19-reinfection-nevada/index.html
And for those that think that kids are immune..., well they are not immune to being spreaders
Kids can carry coronavirus in respiratory tract for weeks, study suggest
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/health/kids-covid-19-nose-throat-wellness/index.html
"In this case series study, in-apparent infections in children may have been associated with silent COVID-19 transmission in the community," the researchers wrote in a new study.
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janejellyroll wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »ExistingFish wrote: »
The shortages are not due to people buying wipes entirely, the material used is also used for PPE - so there is a manufacturing shortage.
Ah, that makes sense. Everything else is in pretty much normal supply here [Canada] except wipes. I've always preferred them for quick small clean-ups because of the dogs, as I once had a puppy decide to lick a disinfectant I'd sprayed before I had a chance to wipe it up and I never want one of my animals to ingest a toxic substance again. Anyway, I had a few tubs on hand and I've been rationing them since I haven't been able to replace them since March.
My father doesn't like colas and drinks only diet pop, and I've been unable to find anything other than diet Coke or Pepsi for about the past month. Turns out there is also a shortage of both artificial sweeteners and aluminum for cans so manufacturers have been focusing on producing their most popular flavours. So now my poor father not only doesn't leave the house, he doesn't have pop to drink.
We assumed this was why my OH's caffeine-free Coke had disappeared - thanks for confirming
Ah, now it all makes sense.
Now, who are you MONSTERS who are not adequately supporting Cherry Coke Zero, clearly the superior cola choice?
That's not Coke!!
This is what you need.1 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
I think if your employer "self-insures" to cover medical care for employees that they would be a covered entity (i.e., they don't provide medical insurance through an insurance company but instead pay claims for employees' medical services directly out of the company's pocket, and thus would be seeing the claims and listed services). I've never actually known of a company that did that, but it's a theoretical possibility.
Even before this crisis, I heard anecdotes of companies' using HIPAA as a reason not to be transparent about health risks to employees or customers. You already used the language I would have chosen (ridiculous BS), but you get extra points for "howlingly".
FWIW, my "company" (a university) self insured. But - and I think this is common, maybe not universal - they used a health insurance company as an intermediary. The university paid the claims costs (and presumably some administrative fees, though I never read the contract), but the intermediary dealt with all the billing, medical billing codes, co-pays, provider network to the extent applicable, and all that specialized stuff. The U considered it financially advantageous to assume the risks (of fluctuating health costs, vs. paying a standard amount per employee for regular insurance, which transfers the risk to the insurance company), but the U didn't want to add the administrative complexity of handling all the billing details.
In that "self insured" scenario, the university was *not* a covered entity, even for most/all of what was involved on our side of the administrative processes. Obviously, this is very situation specific, so I can't speak for other scenarios' details. I did become aware of some other institutions who were also using 3rd party administrators/intermediaries in a similar way, but had no reason to look into wildly different cases.
The extent to which the U was a covered entity turned out to be much narrower than we had originally expected. Mostly, it was the clinical centers associated with the med schools, their pharmacies and similar health care support functions, and the student health center (basically a clinic).
I hadn't considered a situation in which the employer outsourced the administration of the plan and was only financially responsible, although I see how that makes sense. As I said, I've never actually encountered an entity that self-insured. I don't think I would want to work for one, as the pool would be so small that I would be afraid a couple of statistical anomalies in terms of catastrophic events would bankrupt the system. That's interesting. Was it a private or a public university?
Public, large. Shifting to round numbers, say 10,000 regular employees (faculty, administrative) over the course of a year, around 10,000 or so student employees at any given time, twice that over the course of a year. The insurance pool would've been mostly the full-time regulars (plus spouses/dependents), so well more than 10K people there, plus an unknown-to-me number of retirees (full insurance for a lot of those under 65 (and families), at that time, just like if they were still employed, though they don't offer that deal to newer hires anymore) and medicare supplemental for those retirees over 65 (and surviving spouses).
It would be a mix of white collar and blue collar (big food service organization, groundskeepers for giant campus, custodial staff for a couple of hundred buildings, skilled trades of many types), police, professionals (doctors, lawyers, pharmacists), etc. That's a decent-ish population to average over.
I don't know if there was a layer of catastophic risk insurance somewhere in the mix, but I never heard of it. (It was a big enough place that it would self-insure for quite large risks, and externally insure only the excess, in some categories. There was an Office of Risk Management to deal with that and a bunch of other stuff - like avoidance of risk in the first place.)
I don't know whether all this stuff is the same now, or not. I've been retired for quite a while now.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
I think if your employer "self-insures" to cover medical care for employees that they would be a covered entity (i.e., they don't provide medical insurance through an insurance company but instead pay claims for employees' medical services directly out of the company's pocket, and thus would be seeing the claims and listed services). I've never actually known of a company that did that, but it's a theoretical possibility.
Even before this crisis, I heard anecdotes of companies' using HIPAA as a reason not to be transparent about health risks to employees or customers. You already used the language I would have chosen (ridiculous BS), but you get extra points for "howlingly".
FWIW, my "company" (a university) self insured. But - and I think this is common, maybe not universal - they used a health insurance company as an intermediary. The university paid the claims costs (and presumably some administrative fees, though I never read the contract), but the intermediary dealt with all the billing, medical billing codes, co-pays, provider network to the extent applicable, and all that specialized stuff. The U considered it financially advantageous to assume the risks (of fluctuating health costs, vs. paying a standard amount per employee for regular insurance, which transfers the risk to the insurance company), but the U didn't want to add the administrative complexity of handling all the billing details.
In that "self insured" scenario, the university was *not* a covered entity, even for most/all of what was involved on our side of the administrative processes. Obviously, this is very situation specific, so I can't speak for other scenarios' details. I did become aware of some other institutions who were also using 3rd party administrators/intermediaries in a similar way, but had no reason to look into wildly different cases.
The extent to which the U was a covered entity turned out to be much narrower than we had originally expected. Mostly, it was the clinical centers associated with the med schools, their pharmacies and similar health care support functions, and the student health center (basically a clinic).
I hadn't considered a situation in which the employer outsourced the administration of the plan and was only financially responsible, although I see how that makes sense. As I said, I've never actually encountered an entity that self-insured. I don't think I would want to work for one, as the pool would be so small that I would be afraid a couple of statistical anomalies in terms of catastrophic events would bankrupt the system. That's interesting. Was it a private or a public university?
My company is self insured (with a 3rd party to administer claims). With 45k US employees by the time you add in dependents and retirees covered there are easily 150k people+ in the insurance pool. We have another 60k employees worldwide which would also have self funded company insurance but there would be some interplay with governmental insurance programs so don't have a clear picture of that liability. Enough that statistical abnormalities won't move anything. As @AnnPT77 mentioned there may be some sort of umbrella type policy carried but never heard of it.2 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »missysippy930 wrote: »I just read an article from Bloomberg Business week about some businesses instructing employees not to discuss cases of other employees who have Covid-19. This practice is being justified by employers because of hipaa regulations. I would think that employers would want other employees to be aware of coworkers that have the disease, so they can do everything humanly possible to prevent contracting Covid, and the spread in, and outside, the workplace. Instead, some employers are threatening “disciplinary actions”. The article sites the right for others to know about cases of infected coworkers as safety violations in the workplace and not covered by hipaa regulations. Some employers are telling employees with COVID-19, not to inform coworkers. This has been the trend across the country among employers. There have been thousands of complaints to OSHA regarding this. This concerns me and is a dangerous, for people in the workplace, as well as the general public.
Unless there's been a recent dramatic reinterpretation, or there's something unusual about these businesses, they would not be "covered entities" under HIPAA. "Covered entities" are health care providers, related health care clearinghouses, and health plans. The privacy rules portion of HIPAA applies only to "covered entities".
I say this based on having been a participant in my employer's HIPAA implementation, so received a good deal of education about its provisions, but there is a summary here:
https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
I can visualize *very unusual* situations where an employer might possibly have some HIPAA privacy rules obligations sort of as an employer, but IMU a normal employment situation isn't one of them. IMU, just being an employee of something like a health care provider wouldn't be enough, either, with respect to this "tell the co-workers or don't" stuff.
I'm not a deep legal expert on this stuff. If someone here is, they should speak up. However, it's a thing that I coincidentally needed to understand much more fully than Joe Average does.
For sure, in the current crisis, HIPAA is being used as an explanation for things that are howlingly ridiculous BS (like why a store can't ask if someone has a medical condition that prevents mask use).
I'm sure that it's 100% not true that because HIPAA is about "health care privacy", it must mean that anything about my health that I might want to be private (or that someone else wants to stay secret) must be protected by anyone or everyone, can't be asked about, etc.
I think if your employer "self-insures" to cover medical care for employees that they would be a covered entity (i.e., they don't provide medical insurance through an insurance company but instead pay claims for employees' medical services directly out of the company's pocket, and thus would be seeing the claims and listed services). I've never actually known of a company that did that, but it's a theoretical possibility.
Even before this crisis, I heard anecdotes of companies' using HIPAA as a reason not to be transparent about health risks to employees or customers. You already used the language I would have chosen (ridiculous BS), but you get extra points for "howlingly".
FWIW, my "company" (a university) self insured. But - and I think this is common, maybe not universal - they used a health insurance company as an intermediary. The university paid the claims costs (and presumably some administrative fees, though I never read the contract), but the intermediary dealt with all the billing, medical billing codes, co-pays, provider network to the extent applicable, and all that specialized stuff. The U considered it financially advantageous to assume the risks (of fluctuating health costs, vs. paying a standard amount per employee for regular insurance, which transfers the risk to the insurance company), but the U didn't want to add the administrative complexity of handling all the billing details.
In that "self insured" scenario, the university was *not* a covered entity, even for most/all of what was involved on our side of the administrative processes. Obviously, this is very situation specific, so I can't speak for other scenarios' details. I did become aware of some other institutions who were also using 3rd party administrators/intermediaries in a similar way, but had no reason to look into wildly different cases.
The extent to which the U was a covered entity turned out to be much narrower than we had originally expected. Mostly, it was the clinical centers associated with the med schools, their pharmacies and similar health care support functions, and the student health center (basically a clinic).
I hadn't considered a situation in which the employer outsourced the administration of the plan and was only financially responsible, although I see how that makes sense. As I said, I've never actually encountered an entity that self-insured. I don't think I would want to work for one, as the pool would be so small that I would be afraid a couple of statistical anomalies in terms of catastrophic events would bankrupt the system. That's interesting. Was it a private or a public university?
My company is self insured (with a 3rd party to administer claims). With 45k US employees by the time you add in dependents and retirees covered there are easily 150k people+ in the insurance pool. We have another 60k employees worldwide which would also have self funded company insurance but there would be some interplay with governmental insurance programs so don't have a clear picture of that liability. Enough that statistical abnormalities won't move anything. As @AnnPT77 mentioned there may be some sort of umbrella type policy carried but never heard of it.
Mine is self-insured also with a 3rd party administrator and we only have around 10K U.S. employees.3
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