Patient Confidentiality
Reaffirmed October 2008 by the ACEP Board of Directors
Reaffirmed by the ACEP Board of Directors October 2002
This policy statement was originally approved by the ACEP Board of Directors January 1994 and reaffirmed October 1998.
As an adjunct to this policy statement, ACEP's Ethics Committee developed a Policy Resource Education Paper (PREP) titled "From Hippocrates to HIPAA: Privacy and Confidentiality in Emergency Medicine – Part I: Conceptual, Moral, and Legal Foundations"
Moskop, JC, Marco, CA, Larkin, GL, et al. From Hippocrates to HIPAA: Privacy and Confidentiality in Emergency Medicine-Part I: Conceptual, Moral, and Legal Foundations. Ann Emerg Med 2005;45;53-59. Used by permission of Elsevier, Inc.
"From Hippocrates to HIPAA: Privacy and Confidentiality in Emergency Medicine – Part II: Challenges in the Emergency Department"
Moskop, JC, Marco, CA, Larkin, GL, et al. From Hippocrates to HIPAA: Privacy and Confidentiality in Emergency Medicine-Part II: Challenges in the Emergency Department. Ann Emerg Med 2005;45;60-67. Used by permission of Elsevier, Inc.
The American College of Emergency Physicians believes that all physicians have an important ethical and legal duty to guard and respect the confidential nature of the personal information conveyed during the patient-physician encounter. Emergency physicians implicitly promise to preserve patient confidentiality, a promise that in turn promotes patients' autonomy, privacy, and trust in their emergency physicians.
ACEP believes patient confidentiality is an important but not absolute principle. Confidential patient information may be disclosed when patients or their legal surrogates agree to disclosure, when mandated by law, or when there exist overriding and compelling grounds for disclosure, such as the prevention of substantial harm to identifiable other persons.
ACEP also acknowledges that there are circumstances in which no societal consensus exists about whether to disclose patient information. Specific problem areas include but are not limited to cases involving minors, drug testing, employee health, perpetrators and victims of violent crimes, medical records, the media, and communicable and sexually transmitted diseases. Such cases can require an extraordinary degree of sensitivity, discretion, and judgment on the part of emergency physicians.