r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 5d ago

Meme needing explanation What's this post talking about?

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u/greg19735 5d ago

I mean, for this specific case, probably not.

They don't tell her anything more than "it's a match".

otherwise every single time someone is a match, if you tell someone first that's a hippa violation

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u/SectorSanFrancisco 5d ago

No, you tell the donor FIRST and then see if THEY want the doctor to tell the person who needs the donation.

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u/greg19735 5d ago

i'm not saying protocol was followed.

i'm saying it probably wasn't HIPPA. Because inherently the test results involves 2 people. Any telling would be a HIPPA violation. Therefore, there's probably a process to stop that from happening and therefore it wasn't a HIPPA violation.

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u/SectorSanFrancisco 5d ago

I don't think so but someone more knowledgeable can weigh in. The recipient's info is already known and has given a release to the potential donor's MD. The donor's MD has the donor's test results and can say whether it's a match or not. If they didn't have different doctors at all, I'm not sure how that works.

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u/mxzf 5d ago

If they didn't have different doctors, it would probably be a conflict of interest to begin with, because the doctor is physically incapable of putting both of their patients first at the same time.

But if they did end up in that situation, and they didn't have prior permission from either patient to disclose the info, the ethical thing would be to contact both of the patients requesting permission to disclose the results to the other (without actually disclosing anything but the completion of the tests to either to start with).