While giving seminars in Florida last week, I received a lot of questions about disclosures to family members and even close personal friends involved in the patient’s care. Then, this week back in my office while doing HIPAA consulting for a hospital chain, I reviewed one of the hospital chain’s policies and found that it was not compliant.

The Privacy Rule permits covered entities to disclose PHI to family members involved in the patient’s care unless (a) the patient objects or (b) some other state or federal law requires a signed consent. An example of such a law is 42 C.F.R. Part II, which requires a signed consent for disclosure of substance abuse treatment information.

Note that this disclosure is permissive—not mandatory. If the hair on the back of your neck is rising in mortal fear at making the disclosure when you know that doing so would ignite a family feud, don’t do so. Only do so when it would be helpful in providing care to the patient.

Examples of such disclosures would be asking the spouse to help coax some food down a patient that is resisting taking necessary nutrition, having the son or daughter pick up the meds from the pharmacy, having a family member or friend translate, and so forth.

This ground for disclosure doesn’t give the family member or friend access to the whole chart—only to the data that is relevant to the person’s involvement with the patient’s care.

I just wrote a new Sample Disclosures to Family Members Policy and posted it on the Premium Member section of this website.