Alicia urges MDTs to clarify purpose, legal limits and information-sharing norms

Alicia, a lawyer who trains on confidentiality for multidisciplinary teams, opened a webinar urging teams that review elder-abuse or similar cases to agree on five foundational questions: the team’s lead purpose, who should be on it and why, what law governs the team, what law governs each member, and what the team’s norms for information sharing will be.

Why those basics matter, she said, is simple: different purposes require different information and membership. "If the team identified its purpose as increasing prosecution, that is not a provision of health care goal," she said, noting that the team’s lead purpose affects what is appropriate to share and whether smaller submeetings or executive sessions are needed.

Alicia walked attendees through practical legal and ethical constraints. She introduced a "get, the got, and the give" rubric for how teams obtain, hold and disclose information and cautioned that some state statutes create a confidentiality "bubble" around MDT communications, while others do not. She emphasized that MOUs are not statutes: "MOUs are not law. MOUs are not law," she said, adding that written memoranda cannot strip away privileges or mandated reporting requirements.

On prosecutorial duties, Alicia highlighted the Brady obligation: prosecutors and law enforcement must disclose exculpatory evidence in criminal cases, so teams should discuss in advance how potential discoverability would be handled. She also described differences among professions: adult protective services investigators may have discretion to share; federally funded victim advocates operating under VAWA, VOCA or FVPSA rules typically cannot confirm client involvement without consent; and attorneys often make case-by-case judgments about implied authorization.

Alicia cautioned against universal client releases that permit all MDT members to share anything with everyone: "It is too broad and the consequences ... are different," she said, arguing such releases can pressure elders into consenting and are poor practice for survivor-centered care. Instead, she recommended that teams document purposes and member roles in a focused MOU or charter and refresh those documents regularly as membership and aims change.

In the Q&A, Alicia advised against using unregulated artificial-intelligence note-taking tools for confidential MDT meetings: "I would not use AI note taking for any confidential, conversations, communications, or meetings, because we just don't know," she said, citing lack of consistent rules about how vendors use and store data. On district attorney–led teams where a prosecutor shares a victim’s name, she said she could not think of a general legal prohibition against a DA naming a complaining witness to the team but stressed advocates must avoid confirming representation without client consent and that advance conversations about expectations are essential.

Alicia also addressed small and rural communities’ challenges: even without a name, a combination of details (gender, pet, town) can identify a person, so teams must decide what identifying information they will allow and accept the limits that a name-free approach places on deep individual case review. On the question of an MDT member discussing an unrelated case outside a formal meeting, she said those interactions are typically the member’s independent professional contacts and must follow that professional’s own rules.

She closed by pointing participants to tools and further support: a confidentiality toolkit and tech guidance at Techsafety.org and resources from the Safety Net team at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and she offered technical assistance through the Confidentiality Institute. The webinar concluded with logistical notes about an afternoon workshop and a five-minute break.