HIPAA Release

In the United States, a HIPAA release (also called a HIPAA authorisation) is a signed form that permits doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers to share a patient's medical information with the people named in it. HIPAA, the federal health-privacy law, restricts who may receive a patient's protected health information. Without a valid release on file, a provider can decline to discuss a patient's condition with anyone else, including a spouse, an adult child, or the agent named in a healthcare power of attorney, at least until the paperwork establishing that person's authority has been verified.

A release does not hand over decision-making power; it only opens the flow of information. Authority to make medical decisions sits with the healthcare power of attorney. The release is what lets the people around the patient learn enough to use that authority sensibly.

Why it matters for family offices

Incapacity planning for wealthy families usually gets the large documents right: trusts, wills, powers of attorney. The HIPAA release is the small document that helps them work. Many trusts and durable powers of attorney are designed to activate only when a physician certifies that the person is incapacitated. If the successor trustee or agent cannot obtain medical information in the first place, that certification can stall precisely when speed matters most. Releases are inexpensive and quick to sign, which is also why they are so often missing, outdated, or naming the wrong people after a divorce or an estrangement.

How it shows up in practice

A well-run family office typically keeps an incapacity file for each senior family member: healthcare power of attorney, living will, and HIPAA releases naming the spouse, adult children, and sometimes a trusted adviser. The same discipline applies down the generations. Once a child turns 18 they are a legal adult, and parents generally lose automatic access to their medical information, so a college-age family member travelling abroad with no release on file is a common gap. Offices that maintain a document register track who has signed what, where the originals are held, and when each document was last reviewed, so that a medical emergency triggers a phone call and a scan rather than a search.