Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is it just, like, straight-up illegal to get anonymous STD testing in Alabama?
https://law.justia.com/codes/alabama/title-22/title-1/chapter-11a/article-1/section-22-11a-14/
Or is there some workaround where a physician or clinic can “give you the tools for diagnosis” without being the one to diagnose you?
Lots of so-called “confidential” processes are very much not confidential or anonymous once you dig into the fine print. Never tell your psychiatrist that you’ve had suicidal thoughts unless you want to be committed.
Yep, that's my worry exactly. If a professional knows your legal name, or could easily learn it, then any so-called ““““confidentiality””” seems to just become a marketing gimmick meaning they probably won't publish you as a case study, post about it on social media, or talk about you on-the-record with medical professionals not working at the same provider.
I wrote a long comment here but I ended up deleting because their were too many edge cases and complexity but the short version is:
If a healthcare facility or employee abuses your personal information in ANY.WAY. the government will absolutely anally violate anyone involved with several rusty implements. They are extremely aggressive about this to the point where it has become counterproductive and directly harms patient care (ex: nobody wants to send care-critical records to anyone for fear of being beaten with the HIPAA spoon). Exceptions exist but are for the most part extremely well validated.
The above poster is not giving good advice. Having suicidal thoughts is not grounds for commitment. While some health systems are overly aggressive with commitment (so it is a real problem) tons of people are sent home from the hospital or leave their doctor's office after expressing suicidal thoughts. Something like a plan for how you would kill yourself is not the same thing.
Having suicidal thoughts and not telling your doctor or people in your life is for the obvious reasons much more dangerous to you.
"Abuse" is a matter of opinion; HIPAA means they can disclose it only with the patient's "consent".
Have you ever found a single healthcare provider whose notice of privacy practices contained no clauses which were written to include consent to share health information with an open-ended, undisclosed set of 3rd parties? Please share, if you have.
https://www.uabmedicine.org/legal/notice-of-health-information-practices/
What do you imagine happens with this information?
Research for instance requires patient direct informed consent or your data to be totally anonymized. Your privacy is protected, although someone else may benefit from having cared for you.
Some information needs to be given to your insurance for instance so they can pay, that's the primary point of boilerplate like this.
To give an example of how restricted and scary HIPAA is - you do not require patient consent to reach out to a patient's primary care doctor to gather information on the patient. This is important because most patient's struggle to remember all of their health history, their medications, the results of recent lab tests you wouldn't necessarily want to duplicate, imaging results and so on.
Despite this most systems will require patient consent to be faxed to them anyway, even in situations where the patient is say, not able to consent due to illness severity.
If health systems are willing to let quality of care be damaged how free with your information do you think they are?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link