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. |
