The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has some specific requirements related to handling the protected health information (PHI) for minors and for the types of access that can be allowed to this information, even to parents and guardians. Many state-level laws also have requirements for restricting parental and guardian access to minors’ PHI under certain conditions.
With the commonplace practice of allowing individuals access to their account information via Internet applications, particularly among health insurance companies and pharmacies, it is important that covered entities consider the issues and impacts of providing access to the PHI of minors through such automated means as well as in person.
Restricting access to minors’ PHI from parents certainly can be tricky, particularly within automated systems that may not have access controls down to the field level. I just posted a paper, "What Healthcare Organizations Need to Know About HIPAA, Minors and Privacy," on my Realtime-IT Compliance site that provides information about the issues organizations, such as healthcare insurers, healthcare providers and pharmacies, need to address when establishing ways to restrict access to minors’ PHI.
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