HTML clipboardAs many of you may already know, HIPAA is a federal law that regulates how we treat patient information and it goes beyond what has historically been done in terms of treating patient information from a professional ethics point of view. Historically, professional ethics dictated that the actual information in the patient records themselves were to be maintained confidentially and there are a number of reasons behind that theory and that purpose but the main reason is to encourage patients to be as forth right with you when you’re taking histories. The idea is having the patient be as comfortable as possible telling you personal things such as if they take street drugs or not. So that you can prescribe the correct treatment for the patient.
HIPAA goes a little bit beyond what has historically been treated as confidential. HIPAA says that anything you have learned about the patient weather it ends up in the medical records section or not is treated confidentially. That would include financial information, medical information, and any other type of information about the client is now automatically considered confidential.