My friend is a registration supervisor and was suspended for speaking
to person(who happened to be her aunt) about a bill she received. It
was in regards to her cousin whos bill should have been billed to the
police department instead of her aunts insurance. One year later
my friend speaks to a supervisor about the bill at the request of her
aunt and then gets suspended for breaching hippa rules.....
If checking into inquiries is what you do as part of your job then why
can an employer suspend you ??? The bill was sent to my friends aunt
as the guarantor.....

ANY SUGGESTIONS ????

This is not my area of expertise, so I'll leave it to someone else for the details. I do know, however, that it's HIPAA, not HIPPA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Sorry, just one of my pet peeves (kind of like confusing "right to work" with "at will"). ;)

My friend is a registration supervisor and was suspended for speaking
to person(who happened to be her aunt) about a bill she received. It
was in regards to her cousin whos bill should have been billed to the
police department instead of her aunts insurance. One year later
my friend speaks to a supervisor about the bill at the request of her
aunt and then gets suspended for breaching hippa rules.....
If checking into inquiries is what you do as part of your job then why
can an employer suspend you ??? The bill was sent to my friends aunt
as the guarantor.....

ANY SUGGESTIONS ????
Too many variables to understand. Please clarify.
Friend=supervisor
Aunt=patient's mother who received a bill that was meant for the police department
cousin= patient
supervisor= a different supervisor

Your friend spoke to a supervisor about a person's bill. Was your friend working at the time, or did she call the supervisor on the phone, and got permission from the patient to review it?

Yes the variables are complicated but in fact very simple
there are 2 episodes.. One year ago the aunt called my
friend who was at work at the time and asked about a bill
she received that was in her name as guarantor when in
fact it was a bill that should have been sent to the police
department. My friend told her aunt which department and
which person to speak to to recify the bill. The aunt was
calling because the bill was for her son who is mentally ill
and who diagnosis needs to change in the system. There
was no personal information about diagnosis involved nor
disclosure of any personal information about the patient,,,
IT WAS ABOUT THE BILL......END
The second time was a week ago when the aunt asked if
my friend could please find someone to follow though what
the hospital has been lagging on and who else could she
go through to change the diagnosis. My friend passed the
information to her supervisor and the supervisor told her
to email the information to head of department. When the
head of the department got the email.. She hauled my
friend into the office with the HIPPA director and told her
she was suspended for "breaching" the rules. And that
my friend used the information for her own personal use ???
Believe me it was as easy as that !!!!! IT was so fast my
friends head is spinning. The aunt wrote a letter to the
director of the hospital and hippa director explaining my
friends innocense but to no avail,,,, not even a responce
from anyone in the department or the director. My friend
devoted 5 hard years to a grueling job and ungrateful underlings
I have read some of the law that was handed down I just
think there is too much window given to the medical community
to as to how to follow through and how to decide what the
intentions are of the person involved in the misdemeanor.
I just feel she was treated unfairly and not even allowed to
bring in her own evidence for her innocence during the "investigation"
According to the federal law the hospital is responsible to
only give the amount electronic access as is necessary to preform
the job. So the company in fact is irreponsible to give someone
access they didn't feel she needed. Part of her job was to help
patients when they called inquiring about their bills and the fact
this involved someone who happened to be her aunt and cousin
was reason enough to suspend her and their reasoning was that
it was a "thin line". Obviously to me no one except maybe the hippa
director has actually read the law or they would not have been so
quick to jump to a conclusion.

Does your friend work in the billing department? When the aunt called your friend, was she calling the phone # on the bill? If she was not, and your friend did not explain that she could not intercede, that is why she was fired.