Social Work Speaks Abstracts

Confidentiality and Information Utilization

Social workers should already be familiar with and in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). For social work practitioners, clients should be the primary source of information about themselves; only information related to the solution of clients’ problems should be received, recorded, or released. Clients will be fully informed about the implications of sharing information, will have control, through authorized consent, over that information being shared, and will be apprised of the kind of records maintained by social workers or agencies and the right to verify, personally, the accuracy of those records. Social workers in schools, meanwhile, are responsible for informing parents of these rights to informed consent about their children’s records and the right to review the records and request that information deemed educationally irrelevant be expunged from those records.

Furthermore, precautions that once were sufficient in ensuring records security are no longer sufficient in the information age. NASW believes that information obtained about individuals for one purpose must not be used or made available for other purposes, without the individual’s explicit, informed consent; that case records should be maintained in a safe and secure area and; and when these records are computerized, security measures for access should be developed.