Question

You are managing a small inpatient treatment facility. You are emailed by an attorney who represents a client you treated two years ago. The attorney requests your client's treatment records for his divorce and custody case. When the attorney faxes over a copy of the release signed by the client, in the purpose of disclosure section, it says "treatment records. You have a file that has everything from when your client was in treatment-intake forms, assessments, group notes, individual counseling notes, results of a positive and negative drug screening, and the personal life story exercise the client did during a group exercise where he wrote down and told for the first time in his life that he was molested by his uncle when he was 12. How do you ethically handle this request? Please provide a comprehensive, thoughtful answer. HTML Editor BIUA AI E E x x,E E ST T 12pt O words

Answer 1

The most personal information of patient's sexual life,marital life any abuse ,molestation, etc., can be disclosed only when the patient specifies it .In these type of sensitive information disclosure for any purpose them it is purely and completely to be consented by the patient for disclosing and am open statement or consent is not acceptable. It is the legal rights of the patient to inform or not to inform or reveal to others unnecessarily but these types of information are revealed to the healthcare professionals on the grounds of ethics and for treatment, so the healthcare professionals should be highly concerned in maintaining its confidentiality. Revealing such things can be non compliant to HIPAA and punishable.So only the treatment records excluding personal information can be given to maintain patient confidentiality.