By: Russell Keener  —  February 28, 2011
 

The Health Insur­ance Porta­bil­ity and Account­abil­ity Act (HIPAA) pro­vides the frame­work through which patients and oth­ers may access their med­ical records. HIPAA refers to the infor­ma­tion in these records as your “Pro­tected Health Infor­ma­tion” or “PHI.” You gen­er­ally have a right to see and obtain a copy of all of your med­ical records.

View­ing and Obtain­ing a Copy of Your Med­ical Record

You have the right to see your med­ical record. You also have the right to get a copy of your med­ical record. These rights are often called the right of access to your med­ical record.

Usu­ally, your health care provider must let your see your med­ical record within a few days after receiv­ing your request. If you request a copy of your record, your provider must give you the copy within 30 days after receiv­ing your request.

Gen­er­ally, your health care provider must give you a copy in the for­mat that you request. How­ever, your med­ical provider is allowed to ask that you to pay a rea­son­able fee to get a copy of your record.

How Do I Request My Med­ical Record?

You may be able to find some infor­ma­tion about request­ing your med­ical record in your health care provider’s notice of pri­vacy prac­tices. Oth­er­wise, ask your health care provider about their spe­cific pro­ce­dures for request­ing a copy of your med­ical record. The provider may have a form for request­ing your med­ical record. Use this form if one is avail­able. Your health care provider may require that you put your request in writing.

What infor­ma­tion should I include in my request for my med­ical record?

If your health care provider does not have a form for request­ing your med­ical record, you check to see what infor­ma­tion they require. Gen­er­ally, when you ask for your med­ical record, you will want to include the fol­low­ing types of infor­ma­tion in your request:

• Your name and address.
• Your tele­phone number.
• Your e-mail address.
• Your med­ical record num­ber, if you know it, or your date of birth.
• Date(s) of ser­vice (such as the dates you were in a hospital).
• A descrip­tion of the infor­ma­tion that you want to see or copy. This might include:
  Whether you want the entire record or just part of the record.
• Med­ical con­di­tion for which you are ask­ing information.
• Spe­cific test results.
• Whether you want X-rays or records made by heart mon­i­tors or sim­i­lar med­ical devices.
• Whether you want to see your med­ical record, want a copy of your record, or both.

Can My Doc­tor Charge Me for Pro­duc­ing a Copy of My Med­ical Record?

Your health care provider is allowed to charge you for copy­ing your med­ical record. If you request that they mail the copy to you, you can also be charged for postage. How­ever, HIPAA gen­er­ally pro­hibits med­ical providers from charg­ing any­thing more than “rea­son­able” fees for pro­vid­ing the med­ical records to patients. See 45 CFR 164.524©. Arguably, fees that are not cost-based — even if per­mit­ted by a state statute — may be con­trary to the HIPAA reg­u­la­tion and there­fore pre­empted by this fed­eral regulation.

Geor­gia Med­ical Records Costs

In Geor­gia, O.C.G.A. § 31–33-3(a) specif­i­cally out­lines the charges that can be imposed for the copy­ing of med­ical records. These charges include:

Search/Retrieval costs:	Up to $22.78
Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of a record:	Not more than $8.54
Mail­ing of a record:	Actual postage costs
First 20 pages:	Not more than $0.85/page
Pages 21 through 100:	Not more than $0.74/page
Pages 101 and up:	Not more than $0.57/page

Note: For med­ical records which are not in paper form, such as radi­ol­ogy films, the provider is enti­tled to charge the full rea­son­able cost of such reproduction.

Also note: Under the HIPAA Pri­vacy Rule, your health care provider can­not charge you a fee if you just review your med­ical record.

Other Infor­ma­tion Relat­ing to Request­ing Patient Med­ical Records

• You do not have to choose between see­ing your med­ical records and get­ting a copy of them. You have the right to both see and obtain a copy of your med­ical records.
• Your med­ical provider may ask for your Social Secu­rity num­ber on your request for records. Some health care providers con­tinue to use Social Secu­rity num­bers as a way to iden­tify med­ical records and there is noth­ing in the HIPAA Pri­vacy Rule or the Social Secu­rity Act that pro­hibits a pri­vate health care provider from using patient Social Secu­rity num­bers as refence num­bers or iden­ti­fiers in this way.
• You may have to show iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to see or get a copy of your med­ical record. If your health care provider does not know you well, they are sup­posed to make sure you are the per­son who has the right to get the med­ical record before they give it to you. Your health care provider may require rea­son­able proof of your iden­tity. If you are act­ing under a health care power of attor­ney, your provider may require you to show them a copy of the power of attor­ney form. You also may be required to show that the power of attor­ney is in effect. For exam­ple, you may need a let­ter from the patient’s treat­ing doc­tor to show that the patient is unable to make health care decisions.
• If your request for your med­ical record is accepted, your health care provider will inform you. If you sim­ply asked to see your record, your health care provider must arrange a con­ve­nient time and place for you to review it. You have the right to bring one other per­son with you when you review your record. If you have requested a copy of your record, your health care provider must either send it to you or arrange for you to pick up a copy.
• Gen­er­ally, it should take no more than 30 days to obtain a copy of your med­ical record. See 45 C.F.R. § 164.524 (b) (2). The time does not start until your provider receives your request for your med­ical record.
• There are times when the HIPAA Pri­vacy Rule would let a health care provider take up to 90 days to respond to a request for a med­ical record. How­ever, gen­er­ally a patient has a right to receive a copy of his/her med­ical records and related bills within 30 days. See 45 C.F.R. § 164.524 (b) (2). If your med­ical provider requires more time to com­ply with your request, they must make a request for an exten­sion of time. They may do this no more than twice.
• You can ask your health care provider to send the copy of your med­ical record to your reg­u­lar address (such as your home) or to another address (such as to your office or to a friend’s house). As long as your request is rea­son­able, your provider must send your record to the place that you ask.
• Gen­er­ally, your health care provider must give you your med­ical record in the for­mat that you request if it is not dif­fi­cult to do so. For exam­ple, if you request a paper copy of your record, your provider gen­er­ally must give you a paper copy. Providers must also make sure that they send your records to you in a secure man­ner. Many health care providers are reluc­tant to send copies of med­ical records by e-mail or fax because of secu­rity concerns.
• Under the HIPAA Pri­vacy Rule, your health care provider can give you a sum­mary of your med­ical record if you both agree in advance that it is all right for them to give you a sum­mary, and to the fee, if any, they want to charge for writ­ing the sum­mary. Your provider can’t give you a sum­mary in place of your med­ical record unless you agree. If you do agree to receive a sum­mary, your health care provider must gen­er­ally make the sum­mary avail­able to you within 10 work­ing days from the date of your request. If your record is very long and com­pli­cated, or if you were just dis­charged from a health care facil­ity, your provider can take up to 30 days to give you the sum­mary. Your health care provider can charge you a rea­son­able fee for the actual time they spent prepar­ing the summary.
• If you health care provider denies your request for your med­ical record, they must inform you in writ­ing of that fact (by let­ter, fax, email, or pos­si­bly telegram). They must tell you why your request was denied. They also must tell you if you have a right to have their deci­sion reviewed and how you can file a complaint.
• Your provider can­not deny your request for your med­ical record because you have not paid your med­ical bill.
• If your health care provider doesn’t have the record that you requested, they don’t have to locate it for you. But your provider must tell you where the record is kept if they know.
• The HIPAA Pri­vacy Rule doesn’t allow your ealth care provider to avoid pro­vid­ing you with your radi­ographs (x-ray films), by send­ing a copy to another health care provider. Your provider must give you access to your x-ray if you request it.

Expe­ri­enced Atlanta Per­sonal Injury Law Firm

For more than 20 years, the Acci­dent and Injury Lawyers at the Keener Law Firm have focused their prac­tice on rep­re­sent­ing indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies cat­a­stroph­i­cally injured or killed in all types of injury acci­dents, includ­ing auto acci­dents, motor­cy­cle acci­dents, truck­ing acci­dents, wrong­ful death, work injuries, elder abuse and neglect, mis­filled pre­scrip­tions, child day­care injuries, nurs­ing home falls, bed­sores and infec­tions, slip and falls due to dan­ger­ous con­di­tions in busi­nesses, food poi­son­ing, DUI acci­dents, con­struc­tion acci­dents, prop­erty dam­age, worker’s com­pen­sa­tion, and mal­prac­tice matters.

We rep­re­sent per­sonal injury and wrong­ful death vic­tims and their fam­i­lies through­out Geor­gia in Alpharetta, Atlanta, Can­ton, Cham­blee, Chat­ta­hoochee Hills, Clark­ston, Col­lege Park, Decatur, Dorav­ille, Dun­woody, East Point, Fair­burn, For­est Park, Franklin­ton, Hapeville, Johns Creek, Jones­boro, Lake City, Litho­nia, Lizella, Love­joy, Macon, Mari­etta, Mil­ton, Mor­row, Moun­tain Park, Nor­cross, Pal­metto, Payne, Pine Lake, Riverdale, Roswell, Sandy Springs, Sof­kee, Stone Moun­tain, Tucker, Union City, Walden, and Wood­stock, Georgia.

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