Privacy of Health Information Threatened by Health Information Technology Legislation

10th Anniversary of Jaffee v. Redmond Highlights Need for Assuring Privacy Rights

Washington, D.C. – June 13 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1, which held that the privacy of therapist-patient communications is absolutely essential for effective psychotherapy. That decision has been followed in over 330 cases in the past ten years, making it as important to the rights of mental health patients as Brown v. Board of Education was to the rights of minorities.

Congress is poised to pass health information technology legislation that could eliminate essential privacy protections for all patients including mental health patients (H.R. 4157/S. 1418). These bills fail to recognize that strong health information privacy protections are essential for a successful health IT system as well as for quality health care.

A briefing on Capitol Hill at 8:30 a.m. on June 15 in U.S. Capitol Room HC-6, sponsored by the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychoanalytic Association, will review the importance of the Jaffee decision and the right to health information privacy, assessing current state and federal roles in the protection of patient privacy and exploring how the proposed health IT legislation could weaken or eliminate privacy protections for mental health records.

Jaffee recognized that patients undergoing psychotherapy have a legal privilege in the federal courts to keep their mental health information private unless they waive the privilege by providing consent for disclosure of that information. The Court further determined that reliable privacy protections for psychotherapist-patient communications are so essential to effective mental health care that they should not be subjected to a “balancing test.”

For social workers and other psychotherapists, this landmark ruling provided privacy protection of the patient-therapist relationship that is consistent with well established standards of professional ethics. For mental health clients, the case secured an atmosphere of confidence in which they could make a frank and full disclosure of facts, emotions, memories and fears necessary for diagnosis, treatment and effective mental health counseling.

This important decision highlighted key principles essential to effective mental health treatment including:

• The psychotherapist-client privilege is recognized by the laws of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
• Such a privilege is essential to effective psychotherapy.
• Protection of the privacy of the therapist-client relationship is in both the public interest in access to effective psychotherapy and the individual’s interest in privacy.
• Mental health clinicians, including social workers, have an obligation to protect confidential client information, using the legal process if necessary.

Speakers at the Hill briefing will include Karen Beyer, MSW, the social worker who protected her client’s records in Jaffee v. Redmond, Dr. Harold Eist a psychiatrist who defended his patients’ privacy rights in a recent case decided in Maryland, Dr. Robert Pyles, a psychiatrist who has worked with Congress for more than ten years to protect the privacy of mental health information, and Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist who has founded a national patient privacy advocacy group to protect the privacy rights of patients and consumers under federal and state law.

Invited members of Congress include Senators Barbara Mikulski and Debbie Stabenow and Representatives Nancy Johnson, Patrick Kennedy, Edward Markey and Timothy Murphy.

For more information on NASW’s advocacy surrounding mental health, please visit http://www.socialworkers.org/advocacy/issues/mental_health.asp.

For more information on the NASW Legal Defense Fund, please visit http://www.socialworkers.org/ldf/default.asp.

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), in Washington, DC, is the largest membership organization of professional social workers with 145,000 members. It promotes, develops, and protects the practice of social work and social workers. NASW also seeks to enhance the well being of individuals, families, and communities through its advocacy.