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In April 2003, a new federal law took effect in the US, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act known as HIPAA. HIPAA provides new protection for medical and health information, in addition to protection provided by state law. HIPAA was designed to add to state law protections, not remove them. If a state has a law that is more strict than HIPAA, then that law continues to be in force. In Michigan, for example, the HIV confidentiality law is more strict than HIPAA. The HIV law requires special treatment of any information involving HIV/AIDS, and requires written permission for any release of information. One of HIPAA's requirements is that health care providers have to give each patient a written description of how the patient's medical information will be used. Disclosing a patient's information to another health care provider to treat the patient, or to an insurance company for payment purposes, are examples of allowable uses of protected health information under HIPAA that may be mentioned in the health care provider's Privacy Notice. Hopefully by now, you've been given a Privacy Notice by a zillion different health care providers. And if you're like most people, you stopped reading them a long time ago. But here's the thing: too many health care providers seem to think that if they comply with HIPAA, then they've done all that is required to protect your information. In Michigan, and in any other state with a special privacy protection on some type of health information, that is just plain wrong. Meeting HIPAA's requirements may not be enough. By the way, if you don't live in Michigan you could still print this Notice, and then check with an attorney from your state about special privacy protections that may be written into your state law for HIV, mental health, substance abuse treatment, or other special health records. Or call us, and we'll help you figure it out. The Patient's Privacy Notice on the next page is a way to make it clear to health care providers that complying with HIPAA is not enough. Just because they've given you their Privacy Notice doesn't mean that they can freely disclose your information. If every person would print the
Notice on the next page, and sign it and give it to every one of their health
care providers, even if they are not HIV-positive and do not have mental health
treatment information in their records, health care providers would be better
informed and HIV and mental health records would be better protected. And the
effort would probably go a long way towards reducing the stigma surrounding
HIV/AIDS and mental health treatment.
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