Reporting of AIDS Cases – N.Y. Pub. Health Law § 2130

Every physician that is authorized to order diagnostic tests or make a medical diagnosis, or any laboratory performing such tests, must immediately report any HIV infection diagnosed or tested to the commissioner.  The commissioner must promptly forward such report to the health commissioner of the municipality where such disease, illness or infection occurred.   When cases of HIV occur in a municipality not having a health commissioner, the reports must be forwarded directly to the district health officer.

The report should include information identifying the protected individual as well as the names, if available, of any contacts of the protected individual known to the physician or provided to the physician by the infected person.  All reports or information secured by the department, municipal health commissioner or district health officer will be confidential except when used in the aggregate, without patient specific identifying information, in programs approved by the commissioner for the improvement of the quality of medical care provided to persons with HIV/AIDS, or when used within the state or local health department by public health disease programs to assess co-morbidity or completeness of reporting and to direct program needs, in which case patient specific identifying information will not be disclosed outside the state or local health department.

Disclosure of medical information, including a diagnosis of HIV infection, may be made only to the protected individual, the municipal health commissioner or district health officer, and without specifically revealing the identity of the protected individual.

A court may grant an order for disclosure of confidential HIV related information if there is a compelling need for disclosure of the information for the adjudication of a criminal or civil proceeding, a clear and imminent danger to an individual whose life or health may unknowingly be at significant risk as a result of contact with the individual to whom the information pertains, a clear and imminent danger to the public health, or that the applicant is lawfully entitled.