Answer Happy

You are the manager of a physician practice and discover an incident last week. One or two of the medical assistants in the women's health department have been sending out notices to patients using mailing labels that are generally placed on specimen cups for labs. The labels contain the patient's name, address, date of birth and social security number. This was discovered when a patient came in to complain. You also received a returned letter from a patient, and the notice was then turned over to you by a member of the staff. a) Explain the laws and rules protecting patient privacy and security. b) Explain how you would act to enforce those rules as the practice manager in this situation. c) Generally, what would you say in a notice to the patients whose privacy was violated in the incident described above?