On a lighter note than what I usually post on this blog, Veterans Press announces its HIPAA Anxiety Disorder Contest. The winner will receive an autographed copy of my novel, HIPAA Hysteria. In a tongue-in-cheek article in One Magazine, “HIPAA Compliance: Does Behavioral Health Have an Edge?” several years ago, I postulated the existence of a new disorder for the DSM-IV™ 308.x HIPAA Anxiety Disorder as follows: 308.x HIPAA Anxiety Disorder. As an aside, this disorder does not seem to appear in the new DSM-V, either. What with the HITECH Act and the new Omnibus Rule, it is time to add new diagnostic criteria to this disorder; thus, the purpose of this contest is to add new diagnostic criteria to the following existing criteria:

Diagnostic Features

The essential feature of HIPAA Anxiety Disorder is the development of characteristic anxiety, panic, and other symptoms that occur within one minute after exposure to the traumatic stressor of learning about . . . HIPAA’s requirement to protect the security and confidentiality of health information. Either while experiencing this traumatic event or after the event, the individual meets the diagnostic criteria as follows:

Diagnostic Criteria for a 308.x HIPAA Anxiety Disorder

A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event consisting of realizing that he or she will be responsible for implementing HIPAA’s security and privacy regulations in his or her . . . facility in which both of the following were present:

• The person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with a situation that involved management’s reaction to learning of this compliance effort or were led to a belief that HIPAA’s criminal penalties would lead them directly to incarceration in federal prison.
• The person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.

B. Either while experiencing or after experiencing the distressing event, the individual has three (or more) of the following dissociative symptoms:

• Subjective sense of numbing, detachment, or absence of emotional responsiveness.
• Dissociative amnesia, such as inability to recall that they have anything to do with confidential . . . health information.
• Dysfunctional behavior, such as taking the Fifth Amendment upon being asked any question relating to . . . health information.
• Obsessive-compulsive behavior, such as assigning new passwords to all personnel consisting of 128 characters, randomly generated, using a combination of the Sanskrit, Cyrillic, or Thai alphabets.
• Going into a psychotic state upon seeing a yellow sticky note with a password written on it.
• Assigning all patients/clients cover identities and making them wear a disguise to visit the facility.

C. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning or impairs the individual’s ability to perform such necessary tasks.

D. The disturbance lasts for a minimum of two days and a maximum of the time to achieve compliance and occurs within one second of the traumatic exposure to HIPAA.

The winner will be the one who submits the best new diagnostic criteria as selected by myself, my business partner, Richard D. Dvorak, my attorney/editor Alice M. McCart, and Dr. George Savarese, a licensed clinical social worker. If the winner already has a copy of HIPAA Hysteria, he or she will be offered one of my other novels. To enter, just email your entry with “HIPAA contest” in the subject line to my editor, Alice McCart, at alice@tomesdvorak.com, by the contest deadline of July 31, 2013. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of receipt of submission of your contest entry within a couple of days, please call Alice at 913-385-7990, ext. 304. Thanks and good luck! We cannot wait to read your suggestion for new diagnostic criteria.