Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/619635
SOCIAL MEDIA OFFER GRE AT POTENTIAL FOR ENGAGING WITH PATIENTS. BUT WITH FACEBOOK, T WIT TER AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA FORMING AN INTEGR AL PART OF BOTH THE PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL LIVES OF HIGH NUMBERS OF YOUNG MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL S IN PARTICUL AR, OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISCLOSING PROTECTED HE ALTH INFORMATION °PHI± HAVE MULTIPLIED. "IT 'S ONE THING to say, 'Don't post PHI on social media,'" says Daniel Shay, JD, Esq., Associate at Alice G. Gosfi eld & Associates in Philadelphia. "Everybody gets that in a broad, conceptual sense and says, 'Of course. I'd never do anything so stupid' — and then they take a selfi e at work and there's a patient walking by in the background." Without consent, a picture taken of a patient by a provider in a healthcare facility is PHI because it identifi es the patient and, most likely, the location of the photo. But the potential to publicize the fact that a particular individual received treatment can take many other forms as well. Mississippi TV station WLBT reported one such incident. After then-Gov. Haley Barbour posted a question on Twitter in 2009 asking for ways to trim the state budget, an admin- istrative assistant at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) tweeted a response reading, "Schedule regular medical exams like everyone else instead of paying UMC employees over time [sic] to do it when clinics are usually closed." The tweet referred to Barbour's allegedly scheduling an after-hours checkup. Though it didn't mention him by name or provide details of care, the woman says UMMC suspended her for three days and pushed her to resign. She soon did. In a letter to the station, UMMC stated: "Disclosing a patient's protected health information is a policy violation that we take very seriously." ETHICS EDUCATION Training healthcare providers to avoid divulging PHI is a complex endeavor. in a Facebook World PROTECTING PATIENT INFORMATION BY WILL SMITH 2 0❱❱❱❱❱ S P E C I A L F E A T U R E 2 0