Patient engagement in healthcare is increasingly becoming a priority for organizations, but for patients whose providers don't offer patient portals, most still have to request copies of their paper and electronic medical records.
According to an article in Perspectives in Health Information Management discussing survey results, 52.6 percent of healthcare organizations charge patients for electronic copies of their medical records and 64.7 percent charge them for paper copies.
Charges for electronic copies generally were a flat fee by device or a per-page fee, while charges for paper copies typically were by page. The majority of healthcare organizations — 65 percent — said they charge less than $1 per page.
The author of the perspective — Kim Murphy-Abdouch, clinical assistant professor and clinical coordinator in the health information management department at Texas State University in San Marcos — introduces the legal question regarding this practice. CMS, she writes, suggests charging patients for access to their information is "inappropriate" under meaningful use criteria, and HIPAA provides patients the right to see and obtain copies of their records. HIPAA does allow providers to charge a "reasonable cost-based" fee for providing patients copies, but any fee can only include labor and supply costs of copying records and necessary postage.
One-quarter of healthcare organizations said they follow the fee used by the state for copies of records, which generally are the maximum fees providers can charge patients, which "would not generally represent the unique supply and labor costs of each healthcare provider," according to the perspective.
Additionally, healthcare organizations have to balance differing timelines allowed for responding to such requests for medical records: meaningful use calls for providers to have information ready within four days, while HIPAA allows up to 30 days. State statutes can vary from 15 to 30 days, according to the perspective.
"Given all these variations, the time may be opportune for [health information management] professionals and their vendor partners to reevaluate their policies and practices regarding time frames and charges for patient access to personal health information," Ms. Murphy-Abdough writes.
More articles on patient portals:
35 percent of Americans don't realize patient portals exist
Sutter Health launches online health resource for teens
Sequenta launches online portal for physicians