Why do shared hospital rooms not violate HIPAA?
The top comment here is very reasonable, but I still think the application of HIPAA has been a giant mess, reflecting a disdain toward patients similar to everything else in the US healthcare system.<p>I've ranted on here plenty about how often I've dealt with incorrect bills, and HIPAA plays into that as well. My private information can be shared to "traveling doctors", it can be shared with woefully incompetent contractors who handle billing (or, pretend to), and I received a notice last year that my information had been involved in a data breach and I'm not expecting any compensation. When I had to get a very private and sensitive part of my body imaged, they'll gladly announce to the waiting room my name and what procedure I'm there for, even though it's a rather private and sensitive part of my body - very similar to the shared room concern. I don't care that the people in that room aren't likely to misuse my healthcare information, I don't want them knowing where I found a lump anyway.<p>And yet HIPAA is often cited to me over the phone as the reason why we can't seem to get incorrect bills figured out for my dependents. It doesn't seem to me that HIPAA actually does much to protect my privacy, but it sure gets used to obfuscate things when there's a problem.