[Confidential healthcare for Israeli adolescents: towards evolution of specific legislation].

Background: Despite its critical importance, the issue of confidentiality in the provision of adolescent health care has not been specifically clarified by Israeli law.

Objective: To review the conflict between the needs of adolescents, attitudes of the medical community and daily medical practice, and to promote legislation that would allow health care providers to treat adolescents without parental consent under certain circumstances.

The Current Conflict: A major key to the productive encounter between the adolescent and the health professional is the confidence that sensitive information, communicated between them, will not be divulged to anyone, including parents. The Israeli law does not allow minors to give independent consent to care, except under certain circumstances. Also, Israeli physicians frequently do not provide confidential care, even when the issue is explicitly covered by the law such as in the case of termination of pregnancy.

Steps Towards Change: The Ministry of Health adopted an analogy stating that "in the case of an activity in which minors of his/her age are accustomed to engaging, a legal act performed by a minor cannot be cancelled". On this basis, medical associations and other bodies involved in adolescent health recommended that care related to issues requiring privacy should be provided to minors without parental consent or knowledge whenever it is common among a certain age group to seek the specific type of care. However, a clear and updated legislation is still required in order to enhance professional legitimization and awareness.