Turnaround Time on Records Requests

Right of Access Requests are different from a normal Authorization to Release Records. Right of Access is when a patient is making a specific request from their provider to have their records sent to them. These requests have different rules than an Authorization to Release Records. Watch the video to learn more!

Transcription:

We love getting calls and questions and having conversations with our members. It gives us a really good viewpoint of what’s happening in your practices and many practices around the state. The questions that you have, and that many other of your colleagues have as well. We love these, it also gives us the opportunity to be able to figure out, you know, where can we provide better information and better equip our doctors across the state with the information you need to be more compliant to, to practice, to practice better, and to have more success in your practice, whatever it may be, we want to make sure that you’re fully equipped to be able to do this.

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So today, we’re going to talk about HIPAA, right of access requests. Now, right of access requests are more than just a, an authorization to release records authorization to release records, a lot of information, it’s what you’ve been doing for a number of years, but right of access is different. This is when a patient is actually making a specific request for you to send them their medical records, or sometimes they can actually ask you to send them to a third party, but if they’re making the request, and it’s a right of access request, and the rules begin to change under HIPAA, or the fees change and how quickly you have to respond changes, content changes a little bit and, and what you can and can’t do in these regards.

So today, we’re going to talk really about the timeliness, we’ll cover some of the other things in future videos. But today, I really want to talk about the timeliness. The truth is you have to respond quickly. The law specifically says no later than 30 days, so you have no later than 30 days to get those medical records out unless there are very extenuating circumstances and you jump through additional hoops. But 30 days is the long side that you have now, they actually go on to say how quickly you have to do it because they expect you to do it even more quickly. And what they indicate is that they expect that the use of technology will enable you as the covered entity to fulfill the individual’s request and far fewer than 30 days. They say as soon as possible. In factors new rulemaking that’s coming out, it’s been out there for a while they could actually make it final at any point and nails and nail some additional timelines down that actually would shorten it from 30 to 15. So that’s coming down the pipeline when they make those rules final, but they also change the language from as soon as possible to as soon as practicable. And so what they want to make sure that if it’s practical for you to be able to supply these records within a shorter period of time that they really anticipate you’re doing it so know that you want to fulfill them quickly. The longest timeframe that you have is 30 days, and you need to fulfill those requests for those patients when they make those right of access requests.

In future videos, we’ll talk about the fees we’ll talk about some enforcement things that are happening and what happens if you don’t comply let me just help you really quick just comply, the fines and penalties that are associated with these, and what the Office of Civil Rights is doing with their task force. Really make it cost-prohibitive to not just go ahead and make sure that you fulfill these requests. Hopefully, this helps you out. We’ll catch you next week.