Share Your HIPAA Story
NOTE: By pressing “Submit”, you are giving CCHF your consent to share your story online and elsewhere.
NOTE ALSO: Names of doctors, clinics or hospitals will be removed prior to publication, as well as identifying information you submit, such as your last name and/or address. Your personal information is NOT shared with any third parties.
What Happened When You Refused to Sign the ‘HIPAA Privacy Form’
Please share your story about refusing to sign the clinic or hospital’s HIPAA privacy form or the Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) acknowledgement statement. Were you denied treatment? Did they force you to pay cash? Did they argue about it and then let you refuse?
You Have a Right to Refuse to Sign the HIPAA privacy form.
The federal government (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) has publicly stated that you have a right to refuse. That includes the right to refuse to even write the word “refuse” on the form. It includes the right to refuse to push the “accept” button on the pharmacy’s electronic pad.
HHS requires the clinic or facility to write refused, sign and date the form.
IMPORTANT: Refusing to sign (or choosing to sign) provides you with no privacy protection due to the many disclosures and uses permitted without your consent by HIPAA.
However, if your data is broadly shared without your consent and you complain, you are protected from clinic staff or lawyers saying that you signed a form that says you know how broadly your data can be shared and thus you should not have shared that confidential data. In essence they could use the form to blame you for sharing information you needed to share but wanted to protect.
If you refuse to sign the HIPAA privacy form, as you are legally authorized to do, some clinics or doctors or hospitals may refuse to provide treatment. If they do so, they are in violation of your HIPAA rights — but probably only because they don’t know you have that right. Their attorneys may have told them that your refusal to sign could be considered a HIPAA violation.
So…be gentle but firm. You may want to contact us for wallet-size cards to give to them. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a web page that says you are allowed to refuse.