Request By:
Ms. Myrna R. Whittaker
Director of Reimbursements
Big Sandy Health Care, Inc.
City Route 1
Prestonsburg, Kentucky 41653
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of the Attorney General as to whether your agency, Big Sandy Health Care, Inc., can legally give minor children patient information to another agency such as Head Start, Rural Day Care, Magoffin County Health Department, without written parental consent. You state your agency is a non-profit corporation dealing in patient care which works with several other federally funded programs in the area.
The pertinent statute is KRS 205.177 which reads as follows:
"Notwithstanding any existing state statute or regulation to the contrary, any pertinent information concerning individual clients, patients or applicants in the possession of the department of justice, department for human resources, department of education, or any other state or local governmental agency may be shared with any authorized representative of any other state or local governmental agency of similar function if such agency has a direct, tangible, legitimate interest in the individual concerned or his family.
"Any state agency designated in subsection (1) of this section may share pertinent information concerning a client, patient or applicant with any private or quasi-private agency when such agency has an agreement with that state agency assuring the confidentiality of all such information, and provided that the private or quasi-private agency has a direct, tangible, legitimate interest in the individual concerned or his immediate family."
No mention is made in the above quoted statute of the necessity to get parental consent for the sharing of information among appropriate state and private or quasi-private agencies. If the necessary conditions are met for the sharing of information, we believe it may be shared without first obtaining parental consent. The provisions of KRS 205.177 are in harmony with the Kentucky Open Records Law which provides in KRS 61.878 (4) as follows:
"The provisions of this section shall in no way prohibit or limit the exchange of public records or the sharing of information between public agencies when the exchange is serving a legitimate governmental need or is necessary in the performance of a legitimate government function."
It should be noted that the sharing of information among public service agencies does not mean that such information can be made available to the public if it is of a confidential nature.