HIPAA and Social Media

We all love them…those gruesome injury photos from football practice or the soccer game yesterday.  And with today’s social media, our cool injury pictures can spread around the world in a matter of minutes.  I mean, there is even a twitter account made solely to disperse pictures of this sort (@injurypics).  Unfortunately, with all of this technology we could be incorrectly distributing the private health information of our athletes.

Yesterday, we had a local lawyer come speak to our staff and students about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and social media.  One of our GA’s assignments for the year is to redo our website and she has gone above and beyond, creating about every account imaginable for us.  While the website is still in the works, we now have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, an Instagram, and a blog.  All of these things are great, but we thought it would be good to have someone go over the stipulations of HIPAA so we would know if we were violating any of its regulations. Our guest gave some great information to all of us and answered many of our questions.  While some of you may be experts in this area, I thought I would just pass along a little bit of the information that he gave to us as a reminder to think twice before we immediately post a picture to one of our accounts.

First of all, the section of HIPAA that we deal with is mainly the privacy rule which says that individually identifiable health information needs to be guarded.  This is not only to protect the rights of the individual, but also to promote quality health care.  HIPAA only applies to covered entities, but seeing as how athletic trainers are considered health care providers, we fall under this jurisdiction.  This means that if a passerby takes a picture of an injury, they can post it online and they would not be held accountable.  On the other hand, if any one of us did the same thing, we could get into some serious trouble.  We have the responsibility to disperse only health information that is needed to determine the course of treatment for our athletes.

Another point to consider is that most of us know not to plaster our players’ names and faces across the internet.  Therefore, we may spend time editing our pictures but even things that you may think are unidentifiable can still cause a problem.  For example, if there is something in the background of that picture that can cause identification of the individual, then you could still be in violation of HIPAA.

So what can you do?  Well, you can make sure that you always get permission from your athlete or patient before using or showing their picture.  Luckily, it does not matter whether the permission is verbal or written, but you might want to stick with the written form in order to protect yourself.  Also, you can talk to your school lawyer about the policies at your institution.  While you may get permission from the athlete, which will excuse you from any civil or criminal charges, you can still get into trouble with your employer if you are not following their rules.  Often times they will not want you disseminating information or photos because it is unprofessional and could look bad on the organization.

Obviously, having access to a variety of injury pictures through social media can be very educational.  For many of us, it may be the only time we get to see an injury of that sort.  We just need to be sure that we are taking the right steps and precautions.  Hopefully next time you go to post that awesome picture, you will think twice because protecting our athletes should always be our primary concern.