HEATHER IJAMES: Parents have fewer rights than they think
| Friday, Sep 03 2010 11:00 AM
Last Updated Friday, Sep 03 2010 11:00 AM
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Alex Horvath / The Californian Contributing columnist Heather Ijames.
The thing about parental rights is that you have fewer than you think. Take getting your 12-year-old's medical records, for example. You may want them, you may even think you're entitled to them, but you're not, not unless your child consents to giving you a peek.
I'll admit, as both a mother and an attorney, I didn't know this was the prevailing law in California -- both through statute and case law -- until a fellow reader contacted me about an experience she had with the medical records department at a local Kaiser.
Wendi Thomas had set out to obtain her daughter's shot record when a representative from the medical records department asked how old the daughter was. When Thomas said the daughter was almost 12, the representative said that once the girl was, in fact, 12, the mother would need her daughter's consent before the release of any records.
"To say I was floored is putting it mildly," Thomas told me. "I am legally and financially responsible for this little girl until she turns 18 and I have to have her permission to see her medical records. Are you kidding me? Then I read the pamphlet from Kaiser and see that my daughter could see the doctor for an earache or have acne and it may be determined that she really is in need of birth control!"
Thomas is referring to a pamphlet Kaiser routinely hands out to parents, to explore the nuances of California law as their little babies turn the ripe old age of 12, and have dominion over their bodies.
Though this is by no means an issue singular to Kaiser, I talked to Dr. David Lerman, family physician and general counsel of Southern California Permanente Medical Group, A.K.A Kaiser, about Thomas' concerns and asked him to clarify how the law impacts the way Kaiser deals with minors. First, he narrowed down the law's confidentiality scope. He said, "It only applies to certain medical issues: abortion, birth control, mental health, and substance abuse, for example."
I posed a scenario for him where a 12-year-old came into a pediatrician's office because she complained of a sprained ankle, but the doctor managed to start a discussion about birth control during the examination. Hasn't the entire visit become confidential when it otherwise wouldn't?
He told me, "Yes, the visit is now confidential."
Thus, and I'm only throwing this out there to entice hate mail, if a doctor wanted to make sure a parent butts out, they would merely need to incorporate a sex/drug discussion during an immunization visit. If they did this every time, you'd never be able to know what's going on in that exam room. (I'm kidding about the hate mail, by the way. The ones who want to send it have already stopped reading at this point.)
But let's go back to assuming that a doctor wouldn't do that, and separate visits into confidential and non-confidential. Here's another scenario I posed to Dr. Lerman:
What if a parent wanted to view records for a non-confidential visit? Would they be able to? "Legally, yes; practically, no," he said. "What (Kaiser does) is require the minor to authorize the release for all records, whether they're confidential or not because it's just too onerous to redact the confidential parts. It's all one continuous file. We'd need an entire staff dedicated to blacking out portions of files if we had to do that. But if push came to shove because some legal complication arose, we'd go through and redact, even though it'd take hours alone on one file."
Dr. Lerman is a parent too, and understands the frustration many parents feel about these laws. I asked him if he, personally, saw an arguable difference between telling a parent they can't see the medical file of their 12-year-old, as opposed to their 16-year-old.
"Sure, of course," he said. "By 16, kids are driving, they're more independent, have lives of their own, and as parents, we're more accustomed to stepping back."
But at 12? He couldn't answer why the age drops down to 12, as he didn't make the law. You'll have to talk to both the California Legislature and Supreme Court to give you an answer on that one.
Unlike Wendi Thomas, I'm not there yet with a 12-year-old. I still spend tedious amounts of time cutting my children's meat into itty-bitty pieces. Still, it occurred to me that while some things change when a child hits 12, some things don't.
With Thomas' permission, I asked her daughter a couple of questions for the sole purpose of gauging how much of a child still exists in a 12-year-old's body.
Ijames: "Do you think you're old enough to spend a full day going about your daily routine without the help and guidance of your parents?"
Daughter: "No."
Ijames: "If you had to, how long do you think you could spend without your parents taking care of you?"
Daughter: "An hour."
To see the laws as stated in this article, please refer to Cal. Family Code §6925; Cal. Health & Safety Code §§ 123110 (a) and 123115 (a); and, American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren, 16 Cal. 4th 307 (1997). Or, stimulate the economy and hire an attorney.
-- Heather Ijames is one of four conservative community columnists whose work appears here every Saturday. These are the opinions of Ijames, not necessarily The Californian's. You can send e-mail to her at hijames@bakersfield.com.
Next week: Inga Barks.
