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 Nursing Practice > You Asked Us Online 

 Last modified March 7, 2005  

Releasing client information

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Q

I am a public health nurse in a sexual health clinic. The College’s guideline Confidentiality and Privacy — Personal Health Information states that the new privacy act permits practitioners to disclose personal health information to confirm that a person is a client or resident of a facility. Does this mean that a parent or family physician could call our clinic to verify that a person is a client? We have a number of teenage clients who do not want anyone to know that they attend the clinic.

A

The Ontario Personal Health Information Protection Act (2004), also known as PHIPA, became law late last year. This legislation specifies, in section 38(3), that a health care facility may disclose to a person certain health information regarding a client admitted to the facility, if the client is given the option to object to such disclosures. the client does not object, the legislation specifies that the following information may be disclosed at the facility’s discretion:

  1. The fact that the individual is a patient or resident in the facility.
  2. The individual’s general health status described as critical, poor, fair, stable, or satisfactory, or in similar terms.
  3. The location of the individual in the facility.

Releasing information that someone is a client of a sexual health clinic reveals the specific nature of the client’s health concerns. It is much more specific than releasing the information that someone has been admitted to a hospital.

Your clinic needs to determine whether releasing such information would compromise the trust established between the nurses and the clients within the therapeutic nurse-client relationship. To help clarify the issue, your administrator could make a clinic-wide policy to prohibit the release of information confirming who is a client.

If there is no policy, clients will need to be given the opportunity to refuse the disclosure of this information. This information cannot be shared with others if your clients specify that they do not want their parents or family physician to know that they attend the sexual health clinic.

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