Did You Know? You Have The Right To Access Your Health Information

How to get a copy of your medical records

Many people are not aware that they have a right to access their health information for such purposes as:

•     Viewing their medical information
•     Getting a copy of their medical records / billing records
•     Correcting inaccuracies in their medical file
•     Sending a copy of their medical records to a third-party

According to one government source, at least 27% of Americans do not know that they have a right to electronic copies of their medical records (as well as paper copies).

It is important to know what is in your medical record and to correct any errors or omissions. (See: The Problem with Problem Lists.) 

Know Your Patient Rights

These rights are part of The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). In most cases, your health provider must give you your records within 30 days. If your information is not maintained or accessible on-site, it may take up to 60 days. There are some exceptions that may require an extension, and in a few special cases, you may not be able to receive all of your information. For the finer points please see: Your Health Information Rights.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has a video series explaining your rights and how to receive a copy of your medical records at https://www.healthit.gov/access.


View all videos in the series



Lubin & Meyer PC
New England's Leader in Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury Law
Attorneys practicing in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island

The Problem with Problem Lists: How Medical Records Policy Can Backfire

Largest Medical Malpractice Verdict of the Year Hinges on "Problem List"

When a 28-year-old woman suffered a severe stroke after giving birth to her first born child, it was an unexpected outcome given that the woman's life-threatening and previously diagnosed brain abnormality was not properly entered into her medical record. The ensuing medical malpractice case of Larkin v. Johnston (tried by Lubin & Meyer's Benjamin Novotny) returned a verdict of $35.4 million. The landmark case illuminates the topic of "problem lists." In the October issue of Healthcare Risk Management, the article Problem Lists Can Threaten Safety, Pose Liability Risks digs into problem lists as illustrated by the Larkin case — one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts of the year.*

According to the article,

"Many hospitals use problem lists as a way to catalog all health issues affecting a patient, or at least those that are particularly noteworthy for other physicians. A recent study and malpractice case, however, highlight the risk posed by having a policy on problem lists and not following it."

One recent study published in the October 2015 issue of International Journal of Medical Informatics found the levels of completeness of problem lists varied from 60% to 99% across 10 facilities in the study group, with an average of 78%. (See more on the study here.)

According to Attorney Novotny the health system’s problem list backfired...

"The existence of the problem list encouraged clinicians to depend on it for important alerts about a patient’s conditions, he says, which in turn made them lax about digging through the entire patient record in search of important information. When key findings were left off the problem list, the policy ended up causing the very thing it was meant to prevent."

Said Novotny, “They actually had a policy that was right on point for trying to prevent this kind of disaster, and they didn’t follow it. That will always come back and hurt you in court if you have a policy and procedure and don’t follow it.”


* The National Law Journal Verdict Search database from July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015 ranks the Larkin v. Johnston verdict as the 20th largest verdict in the nation, and #1 in Massachusetts.

View our main website at LubinandMeyer.com - Lubin & Meyer PC - New England's Leader in Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury Law.
Attorneys licensed in MA, NH and RI.

Rush Toward Electronic Health Records Raising Risks for Patients

An in-depth article in the Boston Sunday Globe on July 20, 2014, describes how financial incentives to hospitals and doctors offices to implement electronic health records (EHR) as part of the Affordable Care Act is creating an environment prone to medical errors resulting in serious risks to patients.

The article cites a study by CRICO which analyzed "a year’s worth of medical malpractice claims in its comparative database and found 147 cases in which EHRs were a contributing factor."

According to CRICO, common problems with faulty EHR systems include:

• Systems that don't "talk" to each other 
• Improper routing of test results 
• Data entry errors 
• Copy-and-paste errors 

The case highlighted in the Globe article involves a woman who died of an overdose at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Attorney Nicholas Cappiello of Lubin & Meyer is representing the family of the woman in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Cappiello contends that the nurses were "acting in response to multiple orders for insulin that had been entered into two separate prescribing systems used by the hospital — one digital, one involving paper and a fax — and were listed under the names of different doctors."

Said Cappiello, “The root cause is having two different systems that weren’t interacting with each other. It creates human error. Essentially, the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing.”

View our main website at LubinandMeyer.com
Lubin & Meyer PC - New England's Leader in Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury Law. Attorneys practicing in MA, NH and RI.