There are several pending amendments to Public Health Law (PHL) Section 18 which will expand access to patient information and medical records. However, these welcome changes fail to address some of the major deficiencies and criticisms of this outdated statute which appear to contradict and violate federal regulations and guidance under HIPAA, HITECH, and the 21st Century Cures Act.
These include the maximum .75 per page copy charge for paper copies failure to address requests for electronic health records, excepting all examinations and treatments by other medical providers in the requested provider’s records, and failure to specify reasonable time to respond to requests for copies of records. Further changes are called for to remedy these shortfalls.
