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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Short Hills Associates in Clinical Psychology, a New Jersey-based practice, has filed dozens of collection lawsuits against patients for unpaid bills; in the process, disclosing the diagnoses and treatments of patients, including children, in publicly available court records, ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein reports.
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While the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA allows health providers to sue patients over unpaid debts, it requires that they disclose only the minimum information necessary to pursue them. But the law has several loopholes, one of which is that HIPAA only covers providers who submit claims electronically — and apparently Short Hills Associates does not.
Some mental health practitioners expressed outrage that Short Hills Associates had revealed patients’ private information as part of suing them as it “may be more than the minimum disclosure necessary to obtain payment.” Indeed, when Ornstein reviewed the billing lawsuits filed by another psychology group against patients in New Jersey, he found that they redacted diagnosis and treatment information.
More in the full story here: https://www.propublica.org/
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