Mandatory Reporting of Intimate Partner Violence by Health Care Providers May Be Required by State or Tribal Law Free

In their well-written review of intimate partner violence (IPV) Thackeray et al discuss such issues as screening, assessment, advocacy, and collaboration.¹  However, their discussion of reporting contains one erroneous statement. Specifically, the authors state “Although IPV alone is not a situation for which health care professionals are mandated to report, individual states have differing requirements for reporting concerns of children exposed to IPV based on the age of the child, relationship of the child to the perpetrator of the violence, and physical proximity of the child to the violent act. Pediatricians should be aware of state laws regarding the mandated reporting of children exposed to IPV and how it may influence their practice of inquiry for IPV.”

This is inaccurate because in fact states have enacted statutes or regulations that do require health care professionals reporting of intimate partner violence irrespective of its intersection with child abuse or neglect. According to Futures Without Violence, an advocacy group, California and Colorado both mandate reporting of known or suspected domestic/intimate partner violence specifically by health care providers.²  For instance, California’s penal code provides in part that health care providers must report to local law enforcement when they reasonably suspect they have treated “[a] person suffering from a wound or other physical injury inflicted upon the person where the injury is the result of assaultive or abusive conduct.”³  Colorado also requires reporting of domestic violence by health care practitioners related to firearms or resulting in serious bodily injury which involves disfigurement, loss of impairment, or bodily function or risk of death.⁴  Futures Without Violence notes that tribal nations also may have enacted mandatory intimate partner violence laws in some cases.

Mandatory reporting in the health care provider context as has been controversial as has other types of mandatory reporting. While some believe that mandatory reporting of IPV may help health care providers, law enforcement and others address a serious public health and medical issues, as Thackeray et al discuss, such requirements also may undermine patient autonomy, infringe on the physician-patient relationship and cause harms to alleged victims health care providers and others seek to protect.⁵