Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Confidentiality

If an adolescent patient requests confidentiality and non-disclosure to guardians, is there a way to mark the note or chart to indicate that request? What about labs e.g. drug testing, STD results, HIV results, or what about mental health reports? Anyway in AC to mark these items as confidential, requiring special release for disclosure? I'm using AC 8.3

I'm interested in this as well. The subject was brought up at a recent CME I attended on pediatrics. Another issue is billing - having a way to bill out to insurance privately so the parents do not see it with their copay or deductible. I don't know how this could work if an insurance company needs a deductible paid by the patient's parent.

There is a "Confidential" tab in Amazing Charts on the most recent encounter screen but in my humble opinion this is one of the weaknesses in AC. You have to know that something is written in there.

You could create another duplicate chart and mark it using Alerts. From the Demographics page, select "Alerts & Directives". Set the level to "HIGH" and in the Name section use the dropdown "PRIVACY (NON-RELEASABLE INFO)"
This would create a red colored box (lower left hand corner) from the main screen if the name is high lighted from the patient list advising of PRIVACY (Non-releasable info). This is not ideal as if you don't pay attention to the red box, you could select the wrong chart.

Not the best method but a work around

Can you use "restrict chart from" under the Demographics tab? Or does that only restrict the chart from staff members?
Another option could be to put in a High Alert so that when you search the patient and highlight them, you get the big red bar indicating something important. I use that when flagging patient's with a delinquent balance on their account.

Restricting the chart only applies to staff members

I'm thinking one could put the confidential information in the Confidential tab while documenting the encounter. (According to the HELP description "Note: The confidential information will automatically save to the patient's chart as you type it in." I don't think this is correct, it looks like you have to save the encounter in order for the confidential tab entry to be saved)

Then in the Demographics place the Alert & Directive to High & choose the "Privacy (non-releasable information), so that one could see the High Alert red tab when selecting the patient's name from the main screen (that would remind one that there is something in the Confidential tab.

The good/important thing is that according to the HELP description the Confidential tab information is "not printed or exported with any reports or notes", but can be printed manually when clicking on the print confidential tab.