HIPAA ensures that communication (for the purpose of treatment) among health care providers about a patient is privileged. legislation emphasizes the importance of confidentiality, which is enforced through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Forty years after the Tarasoff ruling, the threshold of the duty to protect remains subjective, with no clear set of clinical guidelines regarding when a breach of confidentiality is warranted, which places mental health providers in a dubious position.Ĭonfidentiality facilitates open communication by reassuring patients that the intimate details of their lives that they disclose to their health care providers will remain private. The duty to protect has proliferated widely and has been adapted in some form throughout the United States.
The court's decision mandates that mental health professionals use "reasonable care" in informing authorities or warning potential victims, initially referred to as the "duty to warn," or by using whatever means deemed necessary, should they determine that a patient poses a threat to a third party ( 2). Regents of the University of California (1976), the California Supreme Court held that mental health providers have an obligation to protect persons who could be harmed by a patient. Since the time of Hippocrates, the extent of patients' right to confidentiality has been a topic of debate, with some arguing for total openness and others for absolute and unconditional secrecy ( 1).
0 kommentar(er)
