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Glossary

Treatment purpose of use

The HIPAA basis on which one provider may disclose a patient's records to another without the patient's authorization: the disclosure is for the treatment activities of a health care provider. On the exchange networks it is the purpose a querying organization asserts, and a treating provider is who may assert it.

Also treatment disclosure, purpose of use, POU

HIPAA’s Privacy Rule lets a covered entity disclose protected health information without the patient’s written authorization for its own treatment, payment and health care operations, and, at 45 CFR 164.506(c)(2), “for treatment activities of a health care provider”. Treatment is defined at 164.501 as the provision, coordination or management of health care and related services by one or more providers, including consultation between providers and referral of a patient from one to another. That sentence is the legal basis for every discharge summary a hospital sends to a home health agency, every consult note a specialist returns, and every network query a treating provider makes.

Three consequences follow:

  • No authorization is needed. A provider treating the patient does not collect a signed release to receive the records of another provider who treated the patient. The release of information process, with its forms and fees, is for the other routes: the patient’s own access and third parties such as attorneys and insurers.
  • Minimum necessary does not apply. Under 164.502(b)(2)(i) the minimum necessary standard does not apply to disclosures to, or requests by, a health care provider for treatment. A treating provider may ask for the whole record.
  • The networks answer treatment queries. On Carequality and the TEFCA QHINs, a query carries a purpose of use, and treatment is the one every responder is obliged to answer. The querying organization identifies itself as a provider, with an NPI, and a vendor acting for it does so as its business associate under a BAA.

Where it stops is as important as where it applies. An organization that is not treating the patient, however legitimate its need, is not making a treatment disclosure or a treatment query. A payer’s review, a disability determination, an attorney’s case and a Medicaid eligibility assessment are each a different purpose with its own rules, and on the networks they are different purposes with narrower response obligations. Vivlio serves treatment and the operations that support it, and says so.

Where it is defined

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Send your details and the calendar opens right here. Book thirty minutes and we will walk a record through the view you would actually use, or skip the call and we will come back in writing.

  1. Send your detailsTwo minutes. Your organization, name, email and phone, and the time records cost you; the rest is optional and helps us reply with something specific.
  2. Pick a timeThirty minutes, live, over synthetic records in the shape your team works in. No slides, and no discovery call before the demo.

Who this is for, and who it is not

  • Coverage comes firstVivlio retrieves from providers, hospitals and health systems it can reach through national exchange networks and direct connections. Name the facilities your patients come from on the form and we check coverage before anyone spends thirty minutes on a demo.
  • You can say what the chasing costsThe form asks how many hours a week your team loses to chasing records. If nobody can put a number near it, the case for Vivlio is not there yet, and we would rather say so than sell you a demo.
  • Patients and files at volumeThis is built for intake that runs every day. For one record, once, your patient can request it from the provider directly, and that will be faster than going through us.
  • Treatment, with the paperwork doneProduction access needs an NPI, a declared purpose of use and a signed BAA. Nobody swipes a card onto live PHI.

If none of those describe you, say so in the last field and we will come back in writing instead of booking a call.

Or call sales directly at 404-777-5772

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