Society for Participatory Medicine
e-patients.net blog
As you may recall, in September the federales issued proposed regulations that would make all lab results subject to the basic rule that all patient records should be provided to the patient upon request. See the post on e-patients.net explaining the proposed rule on access to lab results and its background. Following discussion in the comments to the blog post and on the listserv (you can find the late-September thread by searching on “patient access” and “lab results”), I filed comments yesterday on behalf of the Society supporting the rule change, and opposing any delay in access by patients. Thank you to everyone who participated in these discussions.
See the S4PM comment letter.
While the amendments required in order to make these changes are small, surgical edits, final action and implementation of this rule could take up to a year or more.
[...] We can get copies of our medical records from health care professionals and facilities within 30 days under HIPAA — and within a just a few days if our providers are meaningful users of certified electronic health records (it ought to be quicker than that … some day). In some states now, and in all states sometime soon (we hope), we can get copies of our lab results as soon as they are available to our clinicians. [...]
[...] We can get copies of our medical records from health care professionals and facilities within 30 days under HIPAA — and within a just a few days if our providers are meaningful users of certified electronic health records (it ought to be quicker than that … some day). In some states now, and in all states sometime soon (we hope), we can get copies of our lab results as soon as they are available to our clinicians. [...]