How to Care for a Parent with HIPAA Consent
If you are you the caregiver for an aging parent, you may have experienced some frustration in obtaining health information you need to care for that parent. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) does not allow protected health information (PHI) to be shared with a third party without the consent of the patient, even if the third party is the adult child of the patient. To care for a parent in this way, or to even to ask questions about your parent's medical condition, you need a HIPAA consent or authorization for release of PHI.
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Instructions
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Consult with your parent. Though HIPAA automatically recognizes the parent of a minor child as a personal representative, this does not work in reverse. The child of an aging or infirm parent does not automatically become the parent's personal representative. You must have your parent's consent, in writing. Your parent can decide whether to give you access to all PHI or just certain PHI.
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Obtain a HIPAA consent form for your parent to fill out and sign. Unfortunately, there is no standard HIPAA form available. Many doctors' offices and hospitals devise their own. Many different states and insurance companies also devise their own and post them online for download. Caring.com, a website devoted to the subject of caring for aging parents, provides a free HIPAA Privacy Authorization form that you can download. Public Legal Forms.com also provides a form, though you will have to pay a small fee.
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Ensure each of your parent's health care providers has a copy of the signed consent form in your parent's medical record. In addition, whether you obtain the form from the provider or download it, Barbara Kate Repa, senior editor at Caring.com, advises keeping two copies of the signed HIPAA authorization, one for you and one for your parent. If you have different forms from several different providers, keep copies of all of them.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have already become the legal authority to make health care decisions on behalf of your parent with a durable power of attorney for health care, HIPAA recognizes that authority. Thus, you will be allowed access to your parent's PHI when the health care provider has a copy of the document.
