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Psychology Practice Revealed Patients’ Mental Disorders in Debt Lawsuits

posted by martyb on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:38AM   
from the do-no-harm dept.

tt0268978 writes:

The greatest fear of many patients receiving therapy services is that somehow the details of their private struggles will be revealed publicly.

[...] Short Hills Associates in Clinical Psychology, a group based in New Jersey, has filed dozens of collections lawsuits against patients and included in them their names, diagnoses and listings of their treatments.

[...] In cases in which the patients were minors, the practice sued their parents and included the children's names and diagnoses.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA, allows health providers to sue patients over unpaid debts, but requires that they disclose only the minimum information necessary to pursue them.

Still, the law has many loopholes, which ProPublica has been exploring in a series of articles this year. One is that HIPAA covers only providers who submit data electronically — and apparently Short Hills Associates does not.

Who would have guessed that using paper instead of electronic records would make disclosure of confidential medical information more likely?

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Original Submission

• paper vs. electronic paper vs. electronic (Score: 1, Disagree) by fliptop on Saturday December 26 2015, @04:01PM

  by fliptop (1666) on Saturday December 26 2015, @04:01PM (#281213) Journal

  Who would have guessed that using paper instead of electronic records would make disclosure of confidential medical information more likely?

  I think it's more of a case of people who don't pay their bills (whether their records are electronic or not) increases the likelihood of having their information disclosed.

  --
  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

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• Re:paper vs. electronic (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @05:33PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @05:33PM (#281229)

  Uh no. Was it really so hard to RTFS? HIPPA makes it legal to disclose when its on paper, but illegal when it is on a computer.

  Sounds like you've let your moral sanctimony blind you to the whole truth. Seems to be a pretty common thing around here.

  Parent

• Re:paper vs. electronic (Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Saturday December 26 2015, @05:51PM

  by sjames (2882) on Saturday December 26 2015, @05:51PM (#281232) Journal

  Yes, those children absolutely should have quit elementary school and gotten a job to pay their debts...Or perhaps not.

  You're also assuming those debts were all valid.

  Parent