Can my psychiatrist see who my other psychiatrists are through looking up my insurance?

Rafael M.T.Therapist says:
6/21/13 10:57 AM
Hello, I am Rafael. Thanks for asking your question - I'm here to support you. (Information posted here is not private or confidential but public).
6/21/13 11:02 AM
Health insurance companies are financial institutions who get information about your health conditions, different treatments you receive including medications from providers in order to bill-pay-cover services. This means they use health related information to justify coverage for services, which is their ultimate financial role. Health Insurance companies are not health providers, thus the medical - health information they get about customers is limited to what they need in order to justify how each person meets eligibility for coverage. They use codes for classifying medical-health conditions and for interventions.
6/21/13 11:04 AM
On the other hand, health , from your primary care physician to your psychiatrist and psychotherapist are health services providers who create, keep and exchange your complete health records in order to provide the best possible professional support, and they are the ones who share this information with each other as long as they happen to get written consent from you to do so.
6/21/13 11:07 AM
Thus if you want a new psychiatrist who will be supporting you to know about previous treatments, psychiatric drugs, rehabilitation process or anything related to your clinical history, from diagnosis through therapies to discharge processes, he/she would need to get your written consent in order to request your health-medical records directly from previous providers, whether they happen to work at the private clinical practices or at health institutions like clinics or hospitals.
6/21/13 11:14 AM
Your current health provider needs your written consent for him/her to request release of medical files from previous providers. It's not the role of your health insurance company to release information about health-medical records to new health providers. Their role is to justify eligibility for coverage, approving or denying it. that's their job as financial institutions, while health providers do have as part of their professional duties and responsibilities, to share-exchange medical-health records as necessary in order to provide sound services, and always under your written consent. Exception would be in legal cases or situations where general health information is shared for other purposes like employment, financial loans and other.
6/21/13 11:17 AM
Does it make sense? Then your psychiatrist cannot just "see" or get all this information from an insurance company but must directly request it-records from previous providers or access a health records database with your records, after you consent it, since they are always confidential unless a legal-ethical exception is met.