Media Guidelines and Contacts
Our media relations team is here to support inquiries about St. Luke’s hospitals, clinics, providers, patients, programs, and national health care topics. We aim to make access to our facilities and expert staff easy and efficient—while ensuring full compliance with HIPAA and American Hospital Association guidelines.
We’re also available to coordinate interviews with our experts on a wide range of topics, including cancer, children’s health, clinical research, diabetes, heart health, lifestyle medicine, men’s and women’s health, orthopedics, and primary care.
St. Luke’s is happy to work with media partners, while still focusing on our top priority: protecting patient privacy and private health information. We follow the privacy requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. Patients must give specific authorization for the disclosure of their protected health information. News media must adhere to the following guidelines:
Find information on each of the communities we support.
Patient care is our first priority in the event of a disaster or major crisis. St. Luke’s public relations team will work with the media to provide up-to-date information and accommodate requests as soon as possible.
All media requests for information and interviews must be made to St. Luke’s public relations team. All members of the media on St. Luke’s property must be accompanied and escorted at all times by a member of the public relations team or an appropriate St. Luke’s representative. Please arrange for an escort before arriving on campus.
HIPAA and Idaho law generally prevent the hospital, physicians, and other health care providers from disclosing any “protected health information” about a patient without the patient’s prior consent. “Protected health information” includes any information about a patient’s health, health care or payment, including the patient’s condition, treatment or facts giving rise to the their health care.
A description of the patient’s general condition, e.g., whether the patient’s condition is “undetermined,” “good,” “critical,” or the patient has been “treated and released.” The hospital may not disclose any specific medical information about the patient. [45 C.F.R. § 164.510(a)(1)(C).]
The hospital may not provide this information if the patient has objected to such disclosures or if the hospital determines that it is not in the best interests of the patient to disclose the information.
