Hipaa Release Generic: Fill & Download for Free

Federal law is clear in preventing medical, mental health and behavioral records from release in any form without your express permission. But while employers are terrified of the penalties imposed for improperly accessing your health information, they’re more terrified of the exposure to lawsuits and regulatory action if a business is found to have a formal policy and process that enables employment discrimination on the basis of your physical or mental health preexisting conditions. So they’re unlikely to even try, as you’d have standing to sue them if you believed their review of your health records was a factor in their choice not to hire your or end your employment.There are exceptions:If you work for for an insurer or care provider in the healthcare field, the employer can request some health information but only with your prior written consent. You have the option of declining these requests.Employment in jobs that impact or have responsibility for public safety — airline pilots, maritime vessel officers, law enforcement, critical infrastructure and so forth — have a requirement to verify your physical and mental fitness. You can’t decline the request, but they can’t review your records without your prior written consent.Certain executive roles — known as “Key Man” positions — have responsibilities that directly impact financial markets or the viability of the company, which the sudden departure or incapacitation of a “Key Man” would put the company’s market value or ability to remain in business at risk. These roles will have fiduciary requirements to prove the fitness of those holding those jobs. An example would be Elon Musk, who embodies the companies and brands he builds; his sudden departure or inability to carry out his duties would dramatically harm the market’s confidence in a Tesla without his leadership, which makes him an extreme example of a “Key Man”.For most other fields of employment:For standard, enhanced and “full spectrum” background investigations of employees and job candidates in the private sector, the answer is no: medical records, health insurance claims and any current or past medical conditions are all protected under federal laws — primarily the Privacy Rule codified under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requires your affirmative, conditional and time-limited written authorization for each specific party you authorize an entity entrusted with your health records.This applies to any derivative records like billing statements or medication orders containing your Protected Health Information (PHI) or Personally Identifiable Information (PII), as well as any record with a portion of you PHI that could allow an unauthorized party to deduct your medical conditions. Your last name, age, and date associated with a order for chemotherapy treatment would clearly reveal your treatment for cancer, since there aren’t any other health conditions that employ chemo as a course of treatment.Before any employer could access your mental health and other medical records, you would need to complete all of these steps first:Submit a written a HIPAA release for each record-holding entity (hospital, MRI facility, physical therapist, third-party medical test facility, etc.)Identify on each release who is specifically permitted to receive those recordsSelect the categories of data in health data in your medical records you wish to disclose, specifically including mental and behavioral health informationSelect which categories and records are withheld for each record-holder, specifically omitting the automatic withholding of mental health recordsSet an expiration date on those releases to define when they will become invalid that allows the investigation to complete within that timeframeAbsent that, there would be no mechanism for a background investigator to obtain your records without your prior written permission. And even with your blanket permission, notes taken during any therapy sessions or in conversation with a psychologist are not permitted to be released. The intimate and unguarded nature of those conversations prompted lawmakers to ensure mental health professionals could take detailed and inconclusive notes without worry that what they jot down could be disclosed and interpreted without knowing the context.For the Department of Health and Human Service FAQ for patients on their rights under HIPAA, Refer to 45 CFR 164.508(a)(2) to see their guidance on special protections for mental health records.Download a generic HIPAA release form (PDF) to see the level of specificity you are given in controlling your health records. Below is a sample screenshot:And for more general information, this infographic has a summary if HIPAA rights for patients:

I can personally speak to only Federal law enforcement background investigations.Before the most recent (November 2016) revision of the SF-86, *any* mental or emotional health condition treatment, other than very narrow exceptions (such as grief, family, marital, or combat-related adjustment, or, since 2013, sexual assault), required an investigator to visit the healthcare provider with the generic SF-86 HIPAA release. Any “Yes” response to the questions at the bottom of the form resulted in a more detailed release being signed (OFI-61A) that lists the specific facility or healthcare professional name on the release, and allows for more extensive discussion and record review. Alcohol/drug treatment (which are restricted under a separate, more restrictive federal law than HIPAA) always required the detailed release.It didn’t really matter whether the applicant disclosed the name of the healthcare professional. Any concerns of mental instability often presented elsewhere in the background investigation; it’s not good when 7 friends say they think you’re mentally unstable and on meds for that reason. There are a variety of different ways investigators can find out who your healthcare providers are.The new version is more restrictive with what information is requested. It is now limited to only a few carefully selected mental health diagnoses that are known in research studies to be higher risk for espionage and misconduct, and the release is then used the same as before for responses to those conditions. If it’s unclear whether it’s covered, and it’s unlisted, it will be covered in the investigation, so it’s best not to hide it if you need to answer “Yes.”

Fire you? That’s a little heavy-handed for the first time, but if sick leave is abused, probably not.Employers can set reasonable conditions of employment, including conditions for verifying the need for sick leave and can fire or discipline based on an employee’s failure to adhere to those conditions. For instance, if the employer says the morning break shall be for 20 minutes and must be taken between 10:15 and 10:45, so long as the employer doesn’t discriminate, that’s reasonable. If he says that people of one race have a twenty-minute break during this period but people of another race get only 15 minutes - big problem. Unreasonable rules such as requiring employees to stand on one leg for the first hour of work - no.Requiring a relatively generic doctor’s note is well within the authority of the employer. Requiring a doctor’s note with X-rays and urine and blood test results attached is a little over the top.However, HIPAA has little or no application to your scenario. HIPAA deals with the confidentiality of health care records . . . a provider cannot release a patient’s records and information on his or her own but can do so only with a HIPAA waiver (or, in the proper case, a grand jury or trial subpoena). However, a patient can request copies of his or her own records at any time and if the provider gives the patient the records of the patient’s treatment and the patient elects to give them to a third party, even if the third party is the patient’s employer, there is no HIPAA violation. The records, once in the patient’s hands, are the patient’s records and s/he can hand them out on the street corner if s/he wants.