Confidentiality Information

We want you to feel comfortable at Rutgers Health Services (RHS) and to trust that RHS safeguards the privacy and security of your healthcare information. We reinforce this fundamental commitment to confidentiality through management/staff training and educational programs. Every RHS staff member signs a confidentiality agreement, which legally binds them to maintain all matters as strictly confidential. Federal and State confidentiality practices maintain strict security controls over patient health information.

For a full description of how health information about you may be used or disclosed, please see the Notice of Privacy Practices.

E-Mail Communication

To help ensure privacy, patients are cautioned against sending sensitive, detailed personal information to RHS via regular (non-secure) e-mail. Patients who wish to communicate with their Providers via email are encouraged to sign up to use the secure email system, which allows communication directly within the health care system between the Patient and the Provider. The sign up process is simple and can be accomplished by going to the RHS website link. You will be prompted for your “user name” and “password”.  

Additional Information about Confidentiality at CAPS: 

In general everything you say will be kept confidential at CAPS. Counseling, ADAP & Psychiatric Services staff members have a legal and ethical obligation to protect your privacy. However, there are several exceptions to the general rule of confidentiality. We would be required to release information and possibly contact appropriate people if:

• we believed you were a serious threat to either yourself or someone else
• we learned information which led us to believe that someone under the age of 18 was being abused
• we received a valid court order to release the information.

   It is our policy, by the way, to avoid appearance in court. This means that if you anticipate wanting your therapist to testify in court for you (for example, regarding psychological impairment as a result of an accident) we will refer you to someone who specializes in forensic (court-related) work.

   In order to facilitate your counseling, there are several other ways in which information about you might be shared with others. First, if you are seeing one of our graduate student therapists, all their sessions are supervised by a senior staff member. This means in most cases that sessions must be audio or video taped, though this requirement can always be discussed with the therapist. Second, any member of the staff might consult with one or more other staff members within Counseling, ADAP & Psychiatric Services (preserving your anonymity as much as possible) in order to better understand you and figure out the best way to be helpful and to coordinate treatment. If you also see another professional, such as a community provider or a previous therapist, we will ask your permission to get in touch with them in order to coordinate therapy.