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by Stephen R. Jaffe As a visitor to Vermont, I did not have a primary care physician but found myself in need of some medical tests. I therefore had my former physician fax me a prescription for the blood tests I needed to have performed. I took the prescription to a large Vermont hospital and, after confirming my insurance information, had no trouble having the blood drawn and the tests performed. That, however, proved to be the easiest part of the experience. A few days later, I called the hospital for the results. I was informed that the hospital was unable to release my results directly to me; they could only be faxed to a physician. I then called a local physician to whom I had asked the results to be sent in anticipation of seeing that doctor. I was told that, while he the results in hand, I must call the doctor who ordered the test to get them. Annoyed, but not yet angry, I called back to the Midwest, only to find that my old doctor's office was "closed for the national holiday." I had not been aware New Year's Eve day was a national holiday, but so it seemed in that office. I again phoned the hospital which had performed the tests. This time, I was mildly assertive. After much bantering, we reached a semi-agreement: they would release the results to me (a) if I signed "a release" for them and (b) if I personally picked them up (no faxing). "To whom am I authorizing the results to be released?" I asked incredulously. "To yourself," was the reply. When I pointed out that a written release to oneself was nonsensical and even silly, he nevertheless stuck to his two conditions. So, rather than further this fruitless debate, I drove 60 miles round trip and got my results that way. What's wrong with this picture? Except under extremely limited circumstances, under the law of every state of which I know, a patient has an absolute right to his own medical records and results - period. However, try getting your own medical records sometime. You will be met with unassailable walls of bureaucracy, power trips, patronizing and inexplicable ineptitude in most cases. Almost every health care provider will ask you to "release" the records to yourself, a silly and legally meaningless event, if they will give them directly to you at all. If pressed, honest health care provides will admit the real fear is a legal, not a medical one. They fear releasing the records to a non-physician - even the patient himself or herself - will somehow incur a risk of the Big "L" - liability. So, they move the information downstream a notch so the liability, if any, will not be theirs when the information is, like some kind of fantastic secret, finally given to the patient. It is time common sense returned to the health care business with regard to medical records. As I said to the lab tech during our telephone exchange, "It is really my own business what I do with my own medical records. If I wish to make them into a paper airplanes and fly them into the Lake, I have the right to do so. If I have the good sense to consult with a doctor, so much the better." The "fear of liability" tail is wagging the medical profession's entire dog.
I hope the health care providers who read this will give some thought to
this issue and stop treating their own patients like infants incapable
of taking care of themselves. This patronizing attitude does not
serve either the health care provider or the health care receiver very
well.
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