Margo P. Goldman, M.D., is National CPR's director of policy development and a practicing psychiatrist. In addition, in most cases, when people enroll in a health plan they sign a waiver allowing the insurer to obtain medical information for benefits determination. So, unless these blanket waivers are done away with, the contemporaneous ones on the claim form are meaningless. In 90 percent of the cases, these would be diagnosis, procedure code, and date of service.
Separate authorizations are desirable if additional information is requested for case review.
The only way now to prevent an insurer from accessing therapy information is for the patient to pay privately for his or her treatment. Lying is NOT recommended. You can make the patient look too sick to be insured or employed and you can open yourself up to a fraud investigation. National CPR believes strongly that certain types of sensitive medical information, including mental-health treatment, sexual and reproductive health and genetic testing, should receive extra protection within the medical record. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Jaffee v. Redmond, has already reinforced the private nature of the psychotherapeutic relationship, noting that this confidentiality serves both private and public interests.