You probably already have some familiarity with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which was passed in 1996. The section of the act called the Privacy Rule went into effect in April 2003. The Privacy Rule lays down regulations regarding the use and disclosure of your Protected Health Information (PHI). Regardless of whether or not your fees are being paid by an insurance company, the Privacy Rule sets the standard for the correct handling and protection of all medical records, including those for psychotherapy.

The passage of HIPAA is behind that flood of pamphlets you probably regularly get in the mail from anyone who might have created any kind of health care record about you. That's because the act provides for your education regarding privacy and disclosure of your PHI and requires health care providers to inform you about your rights on this subject.

So, here goes......

Rights guaranteed to you by HIPAA include the following:

If you request records from me, I must supply them to you within 30 days. Of course in the case of Cyber Story Therapy, you will already have a record of our conversations by email, should you choose to save them.

You have the right to request an amendment to any record you believe to be incorrect.

I must take reasonable steps to see that there is confidentiality in our communications, for instance, by sending email to you at the email address that you have provided to me for this purpose, rather than to another email I may have acquired in some other way. 

Every counseling forum and medium has its own unique set of challenges regarding the confidentiality of communications. Since we will be using the internet to converse I will make every reasonable effort to keep my computer and the information on it completely secure. No one else will have access to my computer, my passwords or external storage of records, if any. I cannot be responsible for the confidentiality of records on your end.

No computer discourse can be guaranteed to be completely free of the risk of security breeches, such as by hackers, computer theft or inappropriate use by internet service providers. You are encouraged to be your own first line of defense as you decide what to disclose and balance that risk against the benefits of sharing your story.
 
I will keep everything you tell me in the strictest confidence except in the situations below:

If I suspect that a minor child or elderly person in your care is being abused or neglected, I am required by law to report this to the appropriate authorities.  

I will prioritize your physical safety and the physical safety of others over the confidentiality of records. If you threaten to harm yourself or anyone else, I will notify the appropriate individuals or institutions of your intent to the degree necessary to support your safety or the safety of others. That said, Cyber Story Therapy is not the best choice for you if there is a likelihood that you will harm yourself or someone else. Due to the asynchronous nature of our email communications, I cannot be a consistently timely resource for coming between you and the occurrence of destructive or self-destructive acts. 

In rare cases, I may be ordered by a judge or officer of the court to disclose otherwise confidential information about you. 

I may participate in professional consultation and supervision with other mental health professionals who are bound by the same ethical codes to protect your privacy. If I do this, I will be careful to disguise your identity by changing or eliminating personal information that could be used to identify you.