JDMS May/June 2014 Podcast: Health Care Students Who Frequently Use Facebook Are Unaware of the Risks for Violating HIPAA Standards: A Pilot Study

This podcast discusses a research study among students on a health sciences center campus to determine if the students were able to identify whether certain types of content posted on a social media site violated HIPAA. Students could identify a HIPAA violation when it included patient names, medical record numbers or images of the patient, but they were unable to identify HIPAA violations in social media postings that included a place, a date, and a more subtle identifier such as obesity. Discussion focused on whether or not practicing sonographers were at risk for making the same errors, and future research for helping all health care workers learn about what constitutes a HIPAA violation on social media was suggested. Read the full article here.