Is the hospital obligated to report an injury of a patient to his/her place of employment?

situation: a person goes to ER and has an infection of the hand from an old injury and says that it happened at his place of employment. Place of employment doesn't have any record of this employees injury reported nor witnesses. Is the hospital obligated to contact the place of employment regarding this injury?

Is the hospital obligated to report an injury of a patient to his/her place of employment?
Hospitals in most states are obligated to track causes of injury but they do not have to report to your employer. Your insurance company is the one that you have to worry about. If they see that your injury was caused by a work related incident, then they have the right to subrogate your claim against your employer or they may even deny coverage altogether. In as much as you treated at the ER and not in your physicians office, chances are that your insurance company is going to look a bit more closely into the cause of the accident and discover that it was work related. IN any event, you should tell your employer about the injury yourself before they hear about it from your insurance company.
Reply:Nooooo. The hospital cannot release any information about the patient to anyone except the insurance company, the patient, and anyone the patient has put on their HIPAA paperwork.





As another answerer said - The hospital will file their claim with the insurance company. If the patient is claiming it is a Worker's Compensation case, it will be filed to the Compensation insurance which will handle it from there. It can get convoluted to explain (I filed compensation claims for doctors), but so long as the hospital (or even a private doctor) reports their findings truthfully to the patient's insurance company (or companies), they have fulfilled their obligations to the medical insurance system and the insurances will handle it from there.
Reply:The hospital is not obligated to contact the employer. The hospital is, however, required to report the nature and origin of the injury to the insurance company, which will then take it up with the employer in an attempt to have Workers' Comp cover it.
Reply:Absolutely not! In fact, the hospital cannot report anything to anybody, except for child abuse they can call the police.
Reply:without consent of the patient, the hospital is prohibited by law from releasing that info to any 3rd party. At least in the US.