Legal Briefing: Mandated Reporters and Compulsory Reporting Duties

 

Thaddeus Mason Pope

 

This issue’s “Legal Briefing” column, one product of a Greenwall Foundation grant, reviews recent developments concerning compulsory reporting duties.1 Most licensed clinicians in the United States are “mandated reporters.” When these clinicians discover certain threats to the safety of patients or the public, they are legally required to report that information to specified government officials. Over the past year, several states have legislatively expanded the scope of these reporting duties. In other states, new court cases illustrate the vigorous enforcement of already existing duties. I have organized all these legal developments into the following eight categories:

1.   Overview of Mandatory Reporting Duties

2.   Controversy over the Benefits of Mandatory Reporting

3.   New and Expanded Duties to Report

4.   Criminal Penalties for Failing to Report

5.   Civil Liability for Failing to Report

6.   Disciplinary Penalties for Failing to Report

7.   Legal Immunity for Good-Faith Reporting

8.   Protection against Employers’ Retaliation

 

 

Purchasers receive a full-text .pdf file of the article to view, download, and/or print.

Access to the online .pdf will send when the purchaser closes the .pdf.

 

 

Click here to return to The Journal of Clinical Ethics home page.