Question

What stipulations or guidance does your organisation provide with regards to client confidentiality and privacy? Locate this information and summarise it here.

Answer 1

The protection of privacy and confidentiality is essential to maintaining the trusting relationship between healthcare providers and patients and integral to professional practice.

  

The patient's right to privacy of individually identifiable health information, including genetic information, is established statutorily with specific exceptions. Individuals retain the right to decide to whom and under what circumstances, their individually identifiable health information will be disclosed. Confidentiality protections should extend not only to health records, but also to other individually identifiable health information, including clinical research records, oral reporting, images and mental health therapy notes.

Protection should be maintained in the treatment setting and in all other venues. A patient has the right to access personal health information and to supplement that information with what is necessary to make informed health care decisions.

Patient should receive written, clear notification of how their health records are used and when their individually identifiable health information is disclosed to third parties. The use or disclosure of individually identifiable health information without an individual's informed consent is prohibited.

Organizations must develop appropriate administrative physical and technical safeguards required to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of individually identifiable health information. With respect to autonomy, privacy fosters and enhances a sense of self. Respecting privacy and confidentiality enhances an individual's autonomy.