Then blame the liberals who put the stupid hippa laws into place. The longest u can put a mental I'll person into the hospital is 72 hours with their consent...... amazing how the government jerkwads will say its an invasion of privacy to check on a person's mental health but they want the irs to be able to see anything u do with ur money over 600 dollars
Originally Posted by chizzy
HIPAA laws have nothing to do with this.
If you need a medical evaluation (phych is medical) for anything, such as work, a license, a drug test, you go to a third party medical professional. They do the evaluation and then tell the company that requested the test a pass or fail.
Example, you drive a company vehicle, someone hits you. Company needs you to do a drug test right away to make sure you aren't on anything. You go to a med express or what have you, take a piss, then the med express tells your employer 'we did/not detect any drugs in their system'
HIPAA prohibits them from saying WHAT drugs that found and how much of it, but not IF they found any or not. Because you are signing the waiver to allow them to tell your employer if they did or did not find drugs.
A phych evaluation to buy a gun is the exact same thing. If you go to a dealer, you would either need to present them something saying you've already had an evaluation done, or you'd go through a doctor to have them test you, and they tell the dealer pass or fail. Not what they found, just if you pass or fail.
HIPAA basically boils down to
- Do you approve an entity to have access to your medical records?
- If they are a minor, the parent/guardian by default has access to all of their medical records
- Which medical records?
- They get the bare minimum in order to complete their task.
For example on what the bare minimum is;
- For a billing company, they only get your name and some demographic information, contact information (to contact you about the bill), and the dates of service for what they are billing you for. Not any results the doctor found.
- For another doctor, they get any applicable information they need in order to do treatment. If they are in the same network (say, AHN, they use EPICS software), specialists receive data that is already redacted/only applicable to them. If a doctor is sending information to someone outside of their internal network, then the doctor sending the records chooses what to send - and if they send too much, they are in violation of HIPAA and it might come up in an audit.
- For an outside entity that is not medical or medical billing related, they get your name, contact information, DOS, and a redacted test result. Drug test result, positive or negative. Psych evaluation, if they are OK or not OK.
- And in some cases like STD tests, they allow you to have them anonymously tell people you've been in contact with that they might want get tested. Not who they seen, or what you have, just to get a check.
TL;DR a mental health test in order to own a gun would tell the gun dealer the same amount of information that a physical would tell the DMV when you apply for a driving license. Only if you are healthy enough to do it.
