Confidentiality is an essential component of good clinical practice. It is required to:

Preserve the trust of the patient. The patient must feel safe in sharing information about his/her illness with the doctor.

Encourage the patients medical independence or autonomy.

Protect the patient from any criticism or interference with respect to decisions on medical care.

A medical professional must, at all times, keep all information regarding the patient confidential. All information that the doctor comes across regarding the patient while treating him should be kept secret. Medicolegal reports (MLR) must also be treated as strictly confidential. They should not be given directly to the patient but must be handed over to the police official, after getting them appropriately received on the copy of the same. The patient or his family or relatives should be given a copy of the MLR going by the rules of the doctors hospital.

Under certain circumstances, disclosure of personal health information is permitted. These include:

During referral.

When asked by the court or by the police on a written requisition.

When requested by insurance companies as provided by the Insurance Act.

When required for specific provisions of workmens compensation cases and consumer protection cases.

For disease registration.

For investigation of communicable disease.

For reporting of drug adverse events.

Patient’s confidentiality is a component of the medical ethics and has been included in the Medical Council Act; however, the patients right to confidentiality cannot be executed if the patient is HIV-positive and there is a risk that he/she may spread it to the spouse. In such a situation, it becomes the doctor’s responsibility to inform the spouse, and failure to do so would make him an accomplice.