We are a hospital based blood donor center.

Do any donor centers consider blood donors, not patient's to be covered by HIPAA?

From what I understand, they clearly are not covered.

I work at a medium-size blood center and it is my understanding that HIPAA reinforces/enhances the donor confidentiality already in place.

We don't apply HIPAA to our donors. When asked how HIPAA applies to our donor center, we point out that donors are not patients and that we follow FDA regulations pertaining to donor confidentiality instead of HIPAA.

BC

I work at a medium-size blood center and it is my understanding that HIPAA reinforces/enhances the donor confidentiality already in place.

I agree, and while we do apply all of the principles to our donors, I wanted to see what the consensus was if it is required.

My opinion is no, that's also the way I interpret it on the HIPAA site.

Our hospital records people don't agree. It looks like it will be easier just to give out the HIPAA policy and track that we gave it to the donor.

Some arguments that may be useful:

- In the donor setting, FDA regulations preempt all others.

- Donors are not registered into the hospital database. Therefore, they are not patients and HIPAA does not apply.

- Donors do not have medical record numbers- they are not patients. HIPAA does not apply.

I always send 'em packing whenever medical records newbies come around wanting to exert their influence over the donor center.

BC

Ahh, if they were only newbies. This one is a veteran vice president.

As an aside, some of ours are patients, but we do not provide the HIPAA policy, admitting does. Our auto donors are patients of our hospital.

Also, employees donate, and we have medical record numbers as our employee numbers.

We don't enter MRNs into our donor database except for our autologous patients. Like your institution, our auto patients get their HIPAA policy from Admission.

Get Legal on your side. Hopefully that will solve your problem. Whenever I have people wanting to argue the law with me, I always ask them where they went to law school (the same argument people used to use on me before I went to law school). It works every time.

Bob Currie, MT(ASCP) (and JD)