Resources for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

When Is It Okay Under HIPAA to Report Domestic Violence?

www.aishealth.com

A patient presents at a hospital emergency room with injuries that she says are from falling down stairs, but the medical staff determines they are from domestic violence. She asks them not to report the incident to police. What should the staff do? Report it anyway because she could be in more danger? Or respect her wishes and protect her privacy? And how do state laws on investigating domestic abuse come into play? This is the scenario one privacy official posed to his co-workers and to his colleagues through a listserv. "This was a good scenario that we tossed out there to see how others dealt with it," says Steve Stark, information technologies manager at Skaggs Community Health Center in Branson, Mo. "We took this all the way to our legal department ..[and] what we learned through this is that, in the state of Missouri, it is perfectly legal for a physician to report [an incident] even after a request."

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