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Copy Fees and Patients' Rights to Obtain a Copy of Their Medical Records: From Law to Reality

Patients have a legal right under HIPAA to a copy of their medical records. Personal life-long medical records rely on patients' ability to exercise this right inexpensively and in a timely manner. We surveyed 73 hospitals across the US, with a geographic concentration around Boston, to determine their policies about fees for copying medical records and the expected time it takes to fulfill such requests. Fees range very widely, from $2-55 for short records of 15 pages to $15-585 for long ones of 500 pages. Times also range widely, from 1-30 days (or longer for off-site records). A few institutions provide records for free and even fewer make them accessible on-line. We argue that electronic records will help solve the problem of giving patients access to their own records, will do so inexpensively and in a format more likely to be useful than paper.