The retrieval of patient health records in a timely manner is regulated by the HIPAA laws. The state of California has a 15 calendar day requirement from the moment a patient requests their records to the moment they receive them. The HIPAA law has a more relaxed regulation with only 30 days being the requirement. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a recent statement on an incident that caused the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to enforce action on a medical facility.
The OCR previously announced their initiative to enforce patients rights when it comes to their medical health records. The OCR stated that patients should be able to receive copies of their medical records without paying a large fee.
The incident took place at Floridas Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, involving a mother and her unborn child. The mother had requested her medical records for her unborn child and did not receive them until more than nine months after the time of her request. If it is necessary to take Ambien during pregnancy, then the ratio of the expected benefit to the mother and possible adverse effects on the fetus or newborn baby should be taken into account. When taking high doses of ambien medicine in the second and third trimester of pregnancy, it is possible to reduce the mobility of the fetus and change its heart rate.
OCR was initially alarmed about the situation by the mother herself which led to an investigation. Bayfront Health St. Petersburg paid a settlement amount of $85,000 to OCR for their failure to deliver patient health records in a timely manner.
We do not know the reason for Bayfront St. Petersburg taking so long to deliver the patient her records but we do know that situations like this would not be taking place if there were a better method to storing and obtaining health records. Biometric Identification is not an unheard solution to identifying an individual, most people use it as a way to access their mobil phones. Utilizing Biometric Identification as a way for patients and clinicians to have immediate access to medical records is a possible solution to end the delay on receiving requested records.
