Posted by fallsfall on August 31, 2003, at 15:03:35
In reply to Insurance and privacy, posted by Dinah on August 30, 2003, at 17:11:40
Dinah,
My old therapist told me that the insurance company could request my whole chart, but that she would send to them as little as she could get away with.
My understanding of Hippa (and this could be totally wrong...) is that there are two sections to the charts - one with the daily summary that the therapist writes, and the other with things such as the journaling that I used to give her. She read some of the summaries to me. I found them a little dry and factual (probably a good thing). So if she had to send those in, at least I felt comfortable that they were accurate. I believe that she just filled in a 1 page (2??) for the insurance company. Sometimes she showed them to me. I believe she showed me the one for SSDI.
A friend has the joy of filling out the insurance form with her therapist every time it is needed. I think that this gives them an opportunity to talk about status and progress and what needs to be done (she's not likely to talk about that unless forced).
Have you seen stuff that your therapist has written up? He must do insurance things for other patients, can you ask him what kinds of things would be included? What would he consider to be a treatment plan and goals? I was always amazed at how vague she could be and get away with it. I haven't seen anything from my new guy. She used to bring the chart with her so she could look back at things during the session. I've never even seen a chart at his office.
I have NEVER had an insurance company contact me and refer to a diagnosis. I agree that is really out of line.
>>If I start using my insurance in a pre-certified fashion for mental health coverage, how much privacy am I signing away? Will they know about my dysfunctional behaviors? Will they be telling my therapist how to effectively treat me? How about more sessions than they will cover. Can I continue to pay for that out of pocket?
Again, ask your therapist what he would include. I think that a treatment goal might be to reduce self-injury. But that nowhere would it say what kind of self-injury you do. A goal might be to increase socialization, but it wouldn't say that you hide in your garage whenever visitors come to the house (I don't know what you do or why... you will have to fill in the blanks).
My understanding is that they will not tell your therapist how to treat you. However, they will say that they will only pay for X sessions in Y weeks. For people who can't pay for therapy this in essence does tell the therapist how to treat a patient.
The insurance company doesn't care if you want to pay for extra sessions. I would think that they wouldn't even know that you are doing that - wouldn't your therapist only bill them for the sessions that they have agreed to pay for?
Ask your therapist. He can tell you what kinds of things he needs to include and what he doesn't.
I don't like the idea of the insurance company having so much information on me, but I like the idea of giving up therapy less.
Please remember that everything I wrote here is my somewhat informed opinion filtered by my brain which doesn't work at all.
8^)
poster:fallsfall
thread:255717
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030829/msgs/255932.html