HHS Privacy Rules for Addiction Treatment May Add Headache for Providers
Behavioral Health Business February 27, 2024
The newly finalized 42 CFR Part 2 rule, focused on the privacy rights of patients seeking addiction treatment care, creates new opportunities and risks for behavioral health providers.
The federal government released the finalized rule at the beginning of the month. It’s intended to smooth out the historic friction between the patient protection regulations provided by 42 CFR Part 2 and by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In short, Part 2’s regulation of addiction treatment records now looks more like HIPAA.
42 CFR Part 2 came into effect in the mid-1970s in order to protect addiction treatment patients from having their health care data used against them in legal, administrative and legislative proceedings. But decades later, those...