Emsa 7W-OKC
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woodyrr
Member
I certainly hope that EMSA personnel have more intelligence and maturity than that! After all, these are the Einsteins who are handling traffic soooo allegedly critical and sensitive that EMSA feels compelled go to the hassle and expense of implementing digital encryption on all of their communications. The ambulance to hospital stuff, sure, but dispatch?: Laughable!phil_smith said:
It does seem kinda’ “Twilight Zone” that they’d turn it on for a couple of hours and then switch it back off. There was that radio check from OKC fire and I can speculate that the OKC and EMSA bunch might have been monkeying with the tinfoil on the rabbit ears and needed a signal to play with for a spell, but what do I know? Maybe they were monkeying with us! If so, have at it! :roll:fast2okc said:
woodyrr said:
Depends on how a service's lawyers interpret HIPAA. Transmission -- in the clear -- of an address, pt description, and condition could be considered a violation of HIPAA and you don't want to be doing that.
Whether transmitting that info actually is a HIPAA violation is something that has yet to be tested in court, AFAIK (tho' IANAL) but I'm certain no one wants to be the first.
KK5FM
Member
Maybe the dispatcher is site trunking!fast2okc said:
Secret_Squirrel
Nut Protector Extraordinaire
plaws said:
I get real tired of hearing HIPAA thrown out there when it comes to radio talk. Anyone who bothers to put 2 seconds worth of thought into HIPAA in relation to radio communications would see quite easily that it's not the reason why certain agencies have changed or upgraded their radio systems.
Prime example being: The HEAR system which almost every ambulance has operates on VHF. It's been on VHF for many years and it will continue to be on VHF for many years. Research what the system is and why it exists to see why.
The address, patient desciption, and condition are some components that the crews in the field need just to do their basic job. Names of patients are generally not used on the radio and when this HIPAA stuff came out a lot of questions were asked. One of the questions was about radio communications and the general consensus was that as long as the pateints name wasn't being broadcast then things were okay.
I could go on but for the sake of this thread, in a nutshell, HIPAA has nothing to do with why anyone's encrypted, going digital, using decoder rings, or anything like that.
I cannot agree more with Squirrel!
here's my windy rant about EMSA's encryption:
http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showpost.php?p=241776&postcount=27
here's my windy rant about EMSA's encryption:
http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showpost.php?p=241776&postcount=27
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plaws said:
As a journalist, I deal with HIPAA every day. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was created so that people could keep their health insurance when they change jobs. The privacy part of the law was an after-thought. Sometimes, providers think that HIPAA is there to protect them. Not so. It's there to protect the patient.
Just yesterday, OCPD Chief Citty happened to be at the station, and we had a few minutes by ourselves to speak. Our topic was HIPAA. He told me that he had to set up meetings with hospitals here in OKC to be able to get patient information, because hospitals thought that they could keep any and all information from anyone else, at their discretion.
EMSA is a "covered" entity, meaning that they must comply with HIPAA, but the rules are very simple, and the idea that they need to encrypt dispatches is far above and beyond what the law requires. Protected Health Information is individually identifiable health information created, received, transmitted and/or maintained by a covered entity.
A good resource, if you'd like to read up on HIPAA yourself, is the Association of Health Care Journalists website, at http://www.healthjournalism.org/conf/2006/hipaa_info.htm. It's where I copied that last sentence.
Bottom line, there's no legal reason to encrypt dispatch transmissions, except to protect EMSA. It's certainly not to protect the patients.
Secret_Squirrel
Nut Protector Extraordinaire
d_stew said:
That reminds me of a company I used to work for who's motto was "The truth shall set you free".
EMSA dispatch seems to be active on the OKC/Moore Site of the State SZ System today. The dispatch is the only radio coming across (on TGID: 30256, Radio ID: 703272, or 3272 if you're just using decimal).
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