The truth is, if someone is attending a professional outpatient rehab facility, you won’t find out about it unless they tell you themselves or explicitly authorize the treatment center to give out that information.
Addiction treatment centers take their patients’ privacy and confidentiality seriously. These are also protected by Federal laws and regulations. This is done to ease the patients’ stress over seeking treatment and to allow them to focus on recovery. Seeking addiction treatment is challenging enough without having to worry about word getting around that you’re struggling with addiction.
There are several reasons why someone may not inform you that they’re attending outpatient drug rehab. These include:
- Avoiding the stigma and shame that come with addiction. Unfortunately, society judges addicts and assumes that their addiction stems from some moral failing. This is a barrier to treatment as those who need help are reluctant to seek it for fear of having that stigma attached to their name.
- Protecting their employment prospects. Some employers have strict employee policies on drug and alcohol use. Those dealing with addiction often fail to disclose that they’re seeking treatment to protect their jobs. They figure that if their employers found out, they’d be fired.
Rehab is confidential
Several laws and state regulations exist to protect an individual’s privacy and confidentiality when attending rehab. One of these is HIPAA or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. This federal law protects an individual’s sensitive medical information from being disclosed without their knowledge and consent. The medical information referred to includes: the individual’s health status and demographics, where they received treatment, and how they paid for that care.
Thanks to this and other laws and regulations, rehabs can’t disclose to you whether someone has sought addiction treatment at their facility. Similarly, they can’t answer any of your questions or discuss an individual’s progress in recovery unless that person has authorized them to do so. In some cases, treatment facilities have their patients’ sign consent forms allowing certain members of their families to discuss their rehab progress with their doctors or counselors.
Failure to adhere to these confidentiality laws opens up the Outpatient Drug Rehab to lawsuits.
Confidential Outpatient Addiction Treatment in Louisville
At Impact Outpatient Program, we take our patients’ privacy seriously and treat their medical records with the highest confidentiality. Our goal is to provide outpatient treatment to help individuals heal from addiction. To do that, we rely on evidence-based programs including intensive outpatient and regular outpatient programs. We also provide virtual telemedicine sessions online to make treatment more accessible for those who can’t physically make it to the outpatient treatment center in Louisville, Kentucky.
Additionally, we have a simple admissions process and accept a range of insurance providers to make it easy for our clients to pay for their treatment.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about our outpatient addiction treatment programs.