US · guidance
CMS Pub. 100-01, ch. 6, § 170.2
Disclosure to Contractors
Providers and suppliers may not forward medical information to contractors on a
confidential basis, expressed, or implied, since, under the Privacy Act, any medical
information obtained by a contractor is subject to disclosure to the individual to whom
the information pertains or to another person authorized by the individual to have access
to it.
Some providers and suppliers document findings on medical forms pre-printed
"confidential" or routinely stamp all records "confidential" whether or not such records
are ever intended for disclosure to a contractor. The contractor will accept such records
only if the provider or supplier accompanies them with a signed statement indicating the
following:
• That the provider or supplier understands the information is subject to disclosure
to the patient under the Privacy Act, and
• That any words or statements that the transmitted records are confidential may be
disregarded if the patient or the patient's representative requests them from the
contractor or from CMS.
History
(Rev. 1, 09-11-02)
Provenance
- Source
- cms.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-25
- Edition
- iom-2026-08-25
- Content hash
85cbe0d96405973b18f8f077ba14dd2f2d851ddc0c583795e3c909a3e8c60fd7
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.