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Medical Records Fees Need a Major Change in an Age of Technology
Paper files have gone the way of the horse and buggy, replaced by EHR, but fees are still written for that buggy age.
Visiting a physician’s office used to mean filling out forms, signing them, and then placing them into folders with colored tags on the edge. In some offices, where several physicians practiced, the file folders filled a room with these tagged patient files. Hospitals had entire floors with movable library-like sections that slid to open one area for review.
Records could easily be lost or unreadable in a building disaster, such as a broken pipe or a natural disaster of a hurricane, and a patient’s medical history would have to be recreated in a new file. How much was lost in the process?
The age of paper files has been replaced by computer databases where cloud storage ensures safety. Of course, knaves can still hack the database and hold it for ransom. But these databases have relegated paper files to the dustbin. Or have they? When it comes to fees, patients must pay for per-page copies of their records. This aspect of law needs a bit of retooling.
Each state has a fee for patient copies of their medical records, but they are outdated. States charge for a records search (Arizona charges $15, Georgia charges $25.88, and Illinois $29.09…
