Patient privacy settings

For organizations that turn on patient privacy: which shipments are protected, what is masked, why Shipping Center asks for a reason before showing a patient's details, and how protection is added or removed.

Patient privacy is off unless your organization turns it on, or Mercury has made it required for the whole installation (then it is at least By rule). With it off, nothing on this page applies and nothing extra is recorded.

The setting

The Patient information setting has three answers:

Off: no protection, no masking, no extra records.
By rule: shipments are protected automatically by the rules below.
Always: every shipment to a residential address is protected.

An administrator turns it on under Manage, Settings, in the Patient privacy section. Once it is on, the Privacy and Privacy Settings pages appear under Insights.

Which shipments are protected

Only shipments marked Contains patient information are protected. Most shipments, such as supplies or equipment between your own sites, are not. The mark is set automatically when:

a content item marked as a patient item is shipped,
the recipient is an address book entry marked Patient address,
the organization, a unit, the location or the profile protects its shipments by default.

You can also tick Contains patient information under Contents on the ship form. The mark is never printed on the label and never sent to the carrier.

What is masked

On a protected shipment, the patient's name, street and phone are replaced by initials, the city, the state and the ZIP. This applies in lists, on the shipment page, in reports, in search results, in the address book and in emails, including approval emails and digests.

On a protected shipment, the label itself shows the full name and address, so opening, printing or downloading it is allowed only for the person who shipped it, people who ship from that location and people who may see patient details, and each one is recorded.

Showing a patient's details, and why a reason is asked

People whose role allows it can choose Show to see the full details, and pick a reason from a short list: Shipping to the patient, Reviewing for approval, Patient called, Delivery problem, Privacy review or Other, with an optional line of your own words. Picking the reason is the click that shows the details, and the choice is remembered for 30 minutes in that browser tab, so working through a list asks once, not once per row. The details then show with the line "Shown for this visit only. This view was recorded."

If you created the shipment, you see its patient details in full without choosing a reason. Creating it is already on the record.

The reason is asked so that every look at a patient's details is recorded with who looked, when and why. Those records appear in the Patient access card on the shipment page and in the patient access report under Insights, Privacy. People without the right see the masked details only.

Exporting a file with full patient details also needs its own right and a reason: choose Export with patient details on History and pick the reason.

Adding or removing protection

Adding protection is always allowed and needs no reason. To protect several shipments at once, select them on History, open Change patient information for selected shipments and choose Mark as patient information.
Removing protection needs a reason. People with the right open Remove patient protection… on the shipment page, give the reason and choose Remove protection. Anyone else gives the reason and chooses Request removal. The request goes to Approvals, where the approver chooses Approve removal or Keep protected. The shipment stays protected until then.

Changing the mark never changes the label or anything the carrier has.

Other safeguards

References and notes warn, or block if your organization chooses, when the text looks like a record number, a Social Security number, a date of birth or a diagnosis code.
Users are signed out after 15 minutes without activity, unless your organization sets another time.
On help requests, the automatic answer check is skipped, and the form reminds you not to include patient names or details. A tracking or shipment number is enough for support to find a shipment.
When Mercury support enters your organization, they must give a reason or a Mercury ticket number, and the visit is listed on your Audit Trail under Support access. See What Mercury support can see.