Can Businesses Ask If You’ve Been Vaccinated?

Looking for the simple answer to the question "Can businesses ask if you've been vaccinated?" Here is is...

Yes. Businesses can ask you if you've been vaccinated.

If you read that and become outraged and find yourself grumbling about HIPAA violations, well, sorry to say this but this doesn't violate anything regarding HIPAA. There are certain groups and organizations that fall under the HIPAA guidelines. Those include:

1. Health care providers (including doctors, clinics, psychologists, dentists, chiropractors, nursing homes, or pharmacies)
2. Health plans (including health insurance companies, HMOs, company health plans, and government programs that pay for healthcare, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the military and veterans health care programs)
3. Healthcare clearinghouses (including entities that process nonstandard health information they receive from another entity into a standard (i.e., standard electronic format or data content), or vice versa.)

This of course hasn't stopped keyboard health professionals from claiming that businesses can't ask if you've been vaccinated. Someone tweeted out the following:

The rule is simple, HIPAA protects EVERY American from disclosing ANY of their records to ANYONE.

Just CLICK HERE to check out this right-wing whackadoo's Twitter page and you can see just how misinformed they are. But, according to the CDC, HIPAA's privacy rule is:

established a set of national standards to address the use and disclosure of individuals’ health information—called ‘protected health information’ – by organizations subject to the Privacy Rule—called ‘covered entities’ – as well as standards for individuals’ privacy rights to understand and control how their health information is used.

So be prepared. Businesses CAN ask if you've been vaccinated. Of course, you can always lie if you want.