Secrets And Electronic Health Records: A Privacy Concern

By David Schultz
The KNH Blog
Originally published on June 11, 2012

Does your orthodontist or opthamologist need to know what you tell your psychotherapist in order to provide you with quality care? In the age of electronic medical records, a whole range of health care providers may have access to this information whether you want them to or not.

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Here’s what many say is the problem: If a mental health specialist types up his or her notes from a therapy session and puts them into a patient’s electronic medical record, that file can be shared with any doctor the patient sees within their health system. And, because of a loophole in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, there’s nothing a patient can do to stop this from happening.

Many mental health professionals, who consider their patients’ privacy and confidentiality to be sacrosanct, find this appalling. But often times, the decision of how they file their patients’ records is not up to them.

The entire blog post is here.