Doctors used to give patients a copy of their medical records for free. But today, doctors tend to practice in big groups, and they often hire for-profit companies to handle copying. Free is not what they do.
A lot of the copying business for Florida doctors is handled by an Atlanta company called HealthPort Technologies. HealthPort interprets Florida law in a way that makes a lot of trial lawyers steaming mad. Naturally, it’s all caught up in the courts.Today I’m at a law office in Tampa. Attorney Scott Jeeves introduces me to the lead plaintiff in a class-action suit over the cost of copying medical records. Barbara Allen, a tiny 69-year-old grandmother dwarfed by the office chair she’s sitting in.
“I had an accident, and Mr. Jeeves was my attorney", Allen said. "I had signed all the legal papers to give him permission to access any of my medical records that he needed and to get copies.”
It was a slip and fall in a dollar store, and Jeeves needed the records quickly for mediation. Mrs. Allen’s orthopedists contract with HealthPort. For a copy of her 217-page record, the company charged attorney Jeeves $240 – a dollar a page plus shipping and sales tax.
Jeeves protested. Florida patients are only supposed to pay a quarter a page after the first 25 pages, he said. So the price should be $73, plus postage.
HealthPort said well, you’re not the patient.
“The regulation itself says that patients and government entities have one rate and then other entities—their words—have a different rate”, said HealthPort’s General counsel, Jan McDavid.
HealthPort charges the lower price when patients make the request on their own, McDavid said.
"A patient can get anything that the patient requests, but patient requests are fewer than 5% of all requests”, said McDavid.
Mrs. Allen said she signed a paper giving authority to her lawyer to get her records.
"I had a fractured leg with a rod in it, I was in a rehab center for three months", said Allen. "hat’s what you have an attorney for is to do these things for you that you can’t do physically.”
Mrs. Allen’s medical bills were mounting. Jeeves couldn’t keep arguing. So his firm paid HealthPort, and got reimbursed after the settlement.
“Part of what we were trying to do was get the doctors paid", Jeeves said. "It’s the patient’s money.”
McDavid cites a federal law passed in 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA . That has made handling medical records more expensive, she says.
"There are about 32 steps involved, it requires a great deal of training and people, very labor-intensive process working in this highly regulatory environment", said McDavid.
A woman who speaks for trial lawyers in Florida, Debra Henley, executive director of the Florida Justice Association, reads the law differently. The HIPAA law on medical records actually requires that the charges for medical records be reasonable, and that they be cost, the actual cost to the provider, the doctor or the hospital.
Henley says $1 a page is too much , Especially for seniors and also the very ill who have hundreds of pages of medical records that they need from time to time.
The way HealthPort’s McDavid reads the HIPAA law, only 3 types of people qualify for the patient rate aside from the patient.
“A personal representative is someone who can actually seek health care on behalf of the patient", McDavid said. "Attorneys handling medmal and PI cases are not personal representatives.”
Scott Jeeves said HealthPort is wrong.
“A legal representative is basically the same as the patient", Jeeves said. "It’s like the exact same person”.
Recently Hillsborough Circuit Judge William P. Levens ruled against HealthPort. . HealthPort plans to appeal the ruling to the 2nd District Court in Lakeland. Meanwhile, McDavid says, the company will keep charging lawyers like Jeeves $1 a page.