HIPPA/PHI info reclassed into "Business Operations"
My question: is a corporate hospital allowed to reclassify HIPPA/PHI type information into "Business Operations" information and thereby prevent access to it? This feels illegal, but given how little I know about the law, im sure there's lots of loopholes or something.
Background: At the hospital i work at, we use EPIC Systems program EPIC, and it logs literally everything that is done. Specific to this question is that it keeps a log of who, when, what changes are made if any, and how long they viewed a patient's profile. I recently did my yearly remedial HIPPA/PHI PowerPoint course and that information i listed was called out as something the patient can request.
While discussing this, I was informed that a different, corporate, hospital system has removed easy access to who, when, what changes are made if any, and how long they viewed a patient's profile by reclassifying that information into "Business Operations" and removing it from being something a patient is allowed to request access to.
Like i said, this feels illegal and an intentional roadblock to protect the corporation, but I know nothing regarding this and so have no clue.
Cheers
Edit: I reread this and i should make clear that the discussion was with a coworker that previously worked at the corporate hospital. We agreed it was fucked up but it kept bouncing around my brain, so I asked here.