Commission on Youth studies proposals on sharing hospital discharge plans with schools after inpatient psychiatric care

The Virginia Commission on Youth heard a staff study of proposals to change how inpatient psychiatric facilities share discharge-planning information with public schools, a debate that balances student privacy, school capacity and safe school re-entry.

Commission staff member Will Egan presented two draft recommendations developed from legislative proposals and stakeholder interviews. The proposed statutory changes respond to Senate Bill 1143 and earlier drafts; the commission will take no vote at this meeting and has opened the draft recommendations for written public comment through Oct. 15.

Recommendation 1 (modeled on SB 1143, as refined) would authorize a facility to provide portions of a discharge plan to a school counselor or school mental-health professional when the student was originally admitted because the student posed a threat of violence or physical harm to self or others or when the facility determines additional educational services will be needed. The recommendation would add a cross-reference to Virginia health-records privacy law (Va. Code —ormat 32.1-127.103 in staff materials) and ask VDOE to include statutory language and procedural guidelines to protect any discharge-plan information that schools receive.

Recommendation 2 would take a narrower approach: the facility would notify the school that the student had an inpatient stay prior to discharge, and the school could request the discharge plan from the parent, with parents retaining the right to refuse disclosure. Staff framed Recommendation 2 as an option that preserves parental control over medical records while ensuring schools receive timely notice to prepare reentry supports.

"This second recommendation is that instead of disclosing portions of the discharge plan, the facility would only notify the school about the student's stay prior to the student's discharge," Will Egan said, describing the narrower option.

Staff reviewed the legislative history and stakeholder feedback. Senate Bill 575 (2024) originally would have required sharing the entire discharge plan; after stakeholder input the 2025 language narrowed the scope to portions related to safety or additional educational needs, targeted recipients (school counselor or mental-health professional) and added explicit parental notification and refusal rights. Staff also noted HB 2606 (enacted with a sunset) permits dismissal of vexatious and repetitive due-process complaints and that the commission had recommended referral of related questions to the State Special Education Advisory Committee for further review.

Stakeholders raised several concerns. Hospitals said they would not discharge a minor who still posed an imminent risk of harm and that the bill's wording could be difficult to interpret without clearer standards. Hospitals and school officials warned about the risk of further dissemination of sensitive health information and the administrative burden of documenting notices and refusals. Staff noted that similar transitions are often handled by formal reentry protocols, safety plans and release-of-information agreements developed by localities; VDOE maintains model return-to-learn and suicide-prevention templates that some localities adopt.

Commission members also discussed existing interdisciplinary teams. A commission member asked whether the student'centered "FAPT" (family assessment and planning/teams) pathway had been examined; staff replied the expectation in the draft was that a counselor who received notice could connect the case into the FAPT team and that statutory cross-references to FAPT could be added if the commission desired.

No vote was taken. Staff recommended the commission solicit public comment through Oct. 15 and return to vote on a preferred recommendation at the Oct. 21 meeting. Commission staff also advised that only limited data exist on how frequently similar disclosures occur in other states and noted that the statute changes would impose documentation and privacy compliance tasks on hospitals and schools.