Posted by noa on January 31, 2003, at 18:08:31
In reply to Re: Records retrieval, posted by mair on January 31, 2003, at 17:29:47
I was also reading about written session notes today--in an article about HIPAA (I think this stands for Health Information Privacy Act or something to that effect). Anyway, apparently, HIPAA allows therapists to keep separate "process notes" that are not actually part of the medical file. The medical file requires certain basic info, like diagnosis, dates and times and lenghts of sessions, treatment plan, and I think probably major events or incidents, like hospitalization,etc. But if they are kept separately, the therapist can keep written notes on their impressions from the therapy session, and these are not supposed to be considered part of the main record. The article said that this doesn't totally prevent the process notes from being subpoenaed, but they would have to be subpoenaed specifically and are not automatically sent with subpoenaed treatment records. I hope I'm conveying this correctly. Maybe someone else can chime in here with more info....
poster:noa
thread:2352
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20021230/msgs/2403.html