IIRC, you can’t even access your wife’s medical records. Only your own.
But this just deals with you accessing them through regular channels. In adition to the Jim Rockford methods of sometimes questionable legality, one day, you may be able to gain the power of attorney and be responsible for her care. If and when this happens, I think that you’ll be able to access her records as her guardian.
If she doesn’t want to tell ya, it’s prob’ly somethin’ that she finds embarassing, not dangerous to her daughter. You might be better off lettin’ this one lie.
I just gotta double up with Mr. Blue Sky. I work in the I.S. department of a hospital and if there’s something i’m sick and tired of hearing almost every single day, it is HIPAA. It’s getting to the point that even the users who use the software to prepare the medical records for electronic patient folders are getting fed up with the extra security the computers and programs need for them just to do their work. Logins for Novell, Windows, the software itself, the HIPAA reminder after logging in to the program, the HIPAA reminder when going into a patient’s folder to add/make changes, blah blah blah. Rest assured it’s pretty much nonexistent to anyone except the person. And even for the person who wants to review their own data it can be quite a boring process to actually view it.
I work in the insurance billing department of a major hospital.
To give you an example of what HIPAA compliance can be like:
If you give either the hospital or the insurance an incorrect birthdate, even we can’t access information about your claim. AND WE SENT IT! Everthing has to match.
We had a patient who was related (not by blood) to a high muckety-muck on the hospital board of directors. He called demanding to know why the patient’s claim was not being paid (the insurance company was denying the claim in error and we were trying our damnedest to straighten it out). We told him that, without a WRITTEN release form from the patient, we couldn’t tell him anything. Being the jerk he was, he went directly to the CEO (a buddy of his). The CEO told him (in a nice way, I’m sure) no dice.
While I support the HIPAA legislation to an extent, it does hamper our ability to get our claims paid now and again.
You never know what you can get away with if you ask for something with enough authority. Even with HIPAA.
A month ago, on the evening before my mother was supposed to have hip surgery, my sister went to the radiology department at my mother’s hospital and asked to see her CT and MRI scans. They let her see them, even though she is not a part of the hospital and is no my mother physician. A big HIPAA no-no.
The upshot, my sister called the surgeon and told him that it was a pelvic fracture that was not a candidate for surgery. The surgeon disagreed until he reviewed it with the hospital’s radiologist, who told him that my sister was right.
Our company adheres to HIPAA like it was a mandate from God. Anything that might even have a tiny bit of patient information on it goes into a locked box for nightly shredding (presumably by men in hoods carrying torches). Our cheif pharmacist even goes through the trash in the cafeteria periodically. So, yeah, they don’t take patient privacy lightly with these regulations in place.
Look, I don’t think it would be a good idea to try and access medical records which YOUR M-I-L CLEARLY WISHES TO KEEP PRIVATE, even if you could.
She may have a very good reason for not wishing your wife to know why she had a hysterectomy, but even if she doesn’t, it’s not justifiable to pry without her consent.
Your wife can ask her
“Was it for cancer?”
“Is is something I need to worry about having inherited?”
“Do you think it could happen to me?”
and hope that she gets some answers.
In the end it means very little. If it was cancer or something with a hereditary link, all your wife can do is be cautious and vigilant and go for regular check-ups and pap smears. The same thing I’d suggest doing anyway.
Unless your wife wants a full prophylactic hysterectomy, there really isn’t a lot else to be done except check-ups and keeping to a healthy diet and lifestyle.
During my alternative civilian service I worked in a hospital archive. Giving out the information is highly illegal. In addition to that many, if not most, people inquiring about a relative want to check that this person dies “in time.” So this is a kind of red rag for the people responsible for the files. Do not expect to be able to explain this to anyone (they won’t even ask) or try to get some special deal or “just one look”. Especially not if you want to check whether there is a potentially lethal disease involved.
She tried going the asking her route. When she was younger, it got her grounded. When she was older, it got her screamed at, hung up on and then not spoken to for several weeks (not necessarily a bad thing).
I don’t care if it’s embarassing… especially since she’s pregnant now, and it’s a gnawing worry in her mind.
Thanks for all the advice though, folks. It’s good knowing at least legally, where I stand.
I’m an RN and believe me the hospital takes HIPAA regulations quite seriously.
My question is why does your wife want to know why her mother had a hysterectomy? It really doesn’t concern her.
Mom obviously feels this is a private matter and this is her right. Your wife knows this but she still keeps asking yet seems surprised when her mom gets irritated. She should mind her own business and just let it go.
My question is why does your wife want to know why her mother had a hysterectomy? It really doesn’t concern her.
Oh it doesn’t?
What if her mom had ovarian cancer, which is extremely deadly and has a strong genetic link? I’d say she’s got a pretty darn good reason to want to know. There’s no telling WHAT her mother could have been sick with.
Well just MAYBE the mother KNOWS it’s something that doesn’t even potentially affect her daughter, she knows it’s not cancer blah blah blah. Maybe it had something to do with an abortion. Just leave the poor woman alone. Obviously she’s not going to tell you and you can’t get her records. So just live with it.
If her mother had had ovarian cancer, the OP’s wife would’ve known it. That’s not something you can keep secret. And, 25 years ago, ovarian cancer had a very high death rate.
Hysterectomies are extremely common (some say they’re done TOO often, even) and the reasons are usually quite mundane: Uterine prolapse or fibroids causing excessive menstruation. My suspicion is that she had it done for such normal reasons and being (I assume) an older lady, she just isn’t comfortable talking about reproductive issues. For some women, anything related to the reproductive organs is an embarrassing topic.
It seems unlikely to be cancer-related if she didn’t have any followup treatment.
I doubt it was related to an abortion if it was a FULL hysterectomy, especially if you know it wasn’t done under emergency circumstances. There have been cases where severe hemorrhaging after an abortion required an emergency hysterectomy, but I can’t imagine any kind of scenario that uterine damage from an abortion would require removing the ovaries too.
The odds are that it’s nothing your wife needs to be worried about. Just focus on normal preventive care.
For Ovarian cancer, there was a small study of women with a first degree relative who had the disease, which showed that 4-8 years of using a combined oral contraceptive pill decreased the chances of contracting the disease from 4 in 100, to 2 in 100.
Not that I would advise anyone to do anything without talking it through with their doctor.
(Cite: Walker Gr, Schlesselman JJ, Ness RB (Univ of Miami, Fla;Univ of Pittsburgh, Pa) : Family History of Cancer, Oral Contraceptive Use, and Ovarian Cancer Risk. (Am J Obstet Gynecol 186:8-14, 2002)
But like I said, whatever the cause of the hysterectomy, the action is the same, regular checkups and a high index of suspicion for anything weird.
As your wife is pregnant, I can understand that she’s feeling vulnerable and anxious regarding her mother’s OB/GYN history, but she should discuss all of this with her own doctor, and see if they can reassure her.