How can I get a free HIPAA release form for my parents to sign?
Expert Answer by Barbara Kate Repa
Two places: directly from the medical provider or from this website.
Some doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers have their own release forms that they will give patients to complete. These authorize disclosure of all or some types of medical information.
If you have the luxury of planning in advance, contact all the doctors' offices and other medical providers you or the person in your care regularly visits. Find out the procedures they follow and whether they provide a specific form.
If a particular provider doesn't have a form, or you're not able to do this bit of sleuth work in advance, then download and fill out the Free HIPAA Release Form offered on this site.
If you've been trying in vain to find a form to use, you're experiencing a common frustration. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was passed with the best of intentions: to protect individual patient's medical records from being disclosed willy-nilly to anyone who asks to see their contents.
That law requires doctors and other healthcare providers to get written authorization from a patient before they can share most health information about him or her with a "third party" -- and that includes most caregivers, even those who are close relatives. The frustration comes in when a well-meaning caregiver needs particular information to make a good judgment about what medical care to lobby for or insist upon, but he or she doesn't have the written consent required by HIPAA. To make matters worse, there are no standard consent forms provided -- and precious little comprehensible information about what such forms must include.
Whether you get the written release authorization from the healthcare provider or use the one offered on this site, fill out each form, have the person in your care sign it, and keep two copies -- one for you and one for the person you're caring for. Then return the signed forms to the providers' offices.
Repeat this process every time you or the person in your care is about to enter a hospital or visit a new doctor.
Expert Answer by Barbara Steinberg
New York State makes a general HIPAA Release available at http://www.courts.state.ny.us/forms/Hipaa_fillable.pdf. This is the only state where I am able to find a general form. You may want to contact your state Department of Health and ask if they have something similar. You can also ask if they will recognize the New York form.
Answer
I live 4 hours away from my 88 yr old father & I have also been looking for a generic form I could send to all of my father's doctors. So far I have only found the NY State one referenced above. When my mother was ill I wrote up my own form & she signed it & I sent to all of her doctors & carried a copy w/me for emergencies. It is a small town so it was OK w/most of them. What I now do is request one from each doctor's office every time I accompany my father on an appointment & have him sign it right then. Otherwise I keep track of when his appointments are & call while he is there & have them have him fill out the form while he is there.
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