I don't think picking up prescriptions really has anything to do with it. Your spouse or someone acting on your behalf has every right to pick up your prescriptions and it's up to the pharmacist's disgretion as to whether or not they give them to that person. The issue here is that a Prescription History is considered a medical record, and no one is supposed to release medical records to anyone other than the patient, unless the patient is deceased. Also it can be released to a patient's legal guardian, provided that guardian provide proof of such relationship, or in the case of a subpoena for medical records (even that carries stringent guidleines). Plus, under HIPAA, you should have been notified by the pharmacy that they released your records, so if they failed to do that, they could be in even more trouble. They should have fired or severly reprimanded the employee and documented what steps were taken to educate him/her (most large corporations require anyone with access to PHI to sign a form stating they will not violate HIPAA before they are even allowed to clock in for the first time). I guess that was a round about way of saying that picking up someone's prescriptions and being given access to documents considered medical records are two completely different things.

