Your health care provider may, on its own initiative, provide your medical information to others. Or someone else may ask your health care provider for your medical information. In either case, your health care provider may provide your information if you have given permission.
Before you can give consent, you must be fully informed of the reason for providing your data. Either your healthcare provider informs you of this themselves (possibly on behalf of the person or organization requesting your data) or this person/organization does.
Your health care provider may break medical confidentiality if required by law.
Examples include provisions in the Burial Act, the Health Insurance Act (Zvw), the Long-Term Care Act (Wlz) and the Public Health Act. Under the latter law, for example, your health care provider must report a limited number of certain infectious diseases directly to the Public Health Service.
Your health care provider may break medical confidentiality in the event of a conflict of duties. Such a conflict arises when it causes serious harm or danger to you or someone else if your health care provider breaches medical confidentiality.
A conflict of duties exists only in very exceptional cases. It must be an emergency situation. An example might be reporting child abuse.
Your health care provider must have tried everything possible to resolve the problem without breaking medical confidentiality. And your health care provider must first try to get your permission to transmit your medical information anyway. Your health care provider must be able to justify the breach of medical confidentiality.
Your health care provider may share information with those directly involved in your treatment and with their observers or substitutes. These may include other health care providers as well as secretaries or finance staff, for example.
But your data may be shared only to the extent necessary for their work. And if you object to your data being shared, your health care provider may not provide your medical information.
Note: Does your health care provider use an electronic exchange system to share your data? If so, this is only allowed if you have given your explicit consent.
Healthcare providers may provide information to legal representatives to the extent necessary to obtain their consent to treatment. For example, when it comes to the treatment of an adult, legally incapacitated patient. Or of a child under the age of 16.
The healthcare provider then seeks consent from the legal representative(s) of the incapacitated patient or child. In the case of a child, this is usually one or both parents.
Healthcare providers may not provide data to legal representatives if this is contrary to good care-giving. For example, if disclosure goes against the interests of the incapacitated patient or child.
In general, your medical data may be used for scientific research only with your consent. In some cases and under further conditions, this may also be done without your consent.
This is then only allowed if, for example, your consent cannot reasonably be sought. In addition, there must be some safeguards to protect your privacy.
