Mental Health Record Access Request

Functionality

If patients have opted-in to sharing their mental health information with HealthInfoNet, the data will automatically be incorporated within their health records and therefore accessible to users immediately upon breaking the initial privacy seal.

However, for those patients who have not opted-in to sharing their mental health information, an additional mental health privacy seal may be broken by users in the case of a medical emergency or with one-time verbal authorization by the patient.

Users can request access to a patient's mental health information within the "Patient Summary" view by selecting the additional "Break Privacy Seal" hyperlinks located throughout the record.

To break the mental health privacy seal on a patient's health record, users must:

1. Acknowledge that they are authorized to have "Access To" the patient's mental health information for emergency purposes or have received verbal authorization from the patient.

2. Select a "Reason" from the drop-down menu indicating why there is a need to access the record.

3. Provide "Additional Information" about the request that expands on the selected reason.

Once the above three fields have been populated, click on the "Break Privacy Seal" button located at the bottom of the window to display the mental health information within the requested section of the record.

The process of "breaking the privacy seal" allows HealthInfoNet to audit users' activities within patients' health records for privacy purposes. For more information on how to audit users' activities, visit the section on Auditor Role Features.