Client Confidentiality and Privileged Communications (General Counsel Law Notes)

Client Confidentiality and Privileged Communications is a part of a series of General Counsel Law Notes written with the support of the NASW Legal Defense Fund.

Applying the concepts of confidentiality and privilege to the professional services provided by social workers, this law note covers federal health privacy laws and regulations, state law standards, and practitioners' ethical obligations in the following areas:

• confidentiality requirements (including scope of confidentiality and obtaining client consent),
• situations in which disclosure of confidential information is required or permitted (including HIPAA exceptions to confidentiality and instances in which clients are a danger to themselves or others), and
• privilege and the release of client information in legal proceedings.

Also included in this indispensible volume are Section 1.07 of the NASW Code of Ethics (Privacy and Confidentiality); a review of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Frequently Asked Questions regarding the application of substance abuse confidentiality regulations to health information exchange; a comprehensive, state-by-state chart of social worker client privilege and confidentiality laws; and an extensive bibliography.

In the current era of rapid change in information technology capacity, society is undergoing a paradigm shift in expectations regarding privacy; however, the fundamental need for confidentiality remains a lynchpin of successful mental health treatment and effective social work intervention. The confidentiality of client communications is one of the social work profession's ethical foundations, and it is a legal obligation in most states.

By providing practitioners not only with a thorough grounding in this area but the means to work toward increasing universality and uniformity in the state laws that protect clients' rights, Client Confidentiality and Privileged Communications will empower social workers to ideally serve the needs of their clients and to further the advancement of the profession as a whole.