Changes to An Individuals’ Right of Access to Health Records
In January 2018, Georgia-based Ciox Health filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that some sections of the HIPAA Right of Access rules around third-party requests for patient records are impermissible under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Fast forward two years this month when a federal judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the “third-party directive” within the individual right of access “insofar as it expands the HITECH Act’s third-party directive beyond requests for a copy of an electronic health record with respect to protected health information (“PHI”) of an individual … in an electronic format.”
Additionally, the court held that the fee limitation should only apply to an individual’s request for access to their records, and does not apply to an individual’s request to transmit health documents to a third party.