For those individuals who have been a patient at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital in Denver — Be Aware.  This hospital has the capability of providing you an electronic copy of your record but will not do so!  Instead, the executives of this hospital will require that you pay the cost of a paper chart which, usually, will cost you hundreds of dollars.  This is true even though Exempla St. Joseph Hospital has the ability to provide you a copy of your chart on a disk or drive at little or no cost to the hospital and to you.  This is in violation of federal law, specifically HIPAA, which requires that the hospital charge no more than the actual cost of copying the record.  Why would Exempla St. Joseph take financial advantage of its patients like this? 

            Recently a former patient of Exempla St. Joseph requested that I review the care provided to her and her infant son.  Initially the hospital representative indicated that the hospital now had its records in electronic form rather than paper.  She advised I could come and look at the computer screen but had to have a hospital representative looking over my shoulder and my client had to pay for that person’s time!  We then indicated we wanted to bring a disk to the hospital and have the record downloaded from the computer which would not cost the hospital anything.  The hospital refused to provide an electronic copy and insisted that a paper copy be provided at a cost of over $400.  The hospital attorney indicated, when asked, that this was not because an attorney was involved but that the same policy would apply if a patient was directly requesting his or her medical record, such as if moving to another area of the country and wanting to take the medical record with them.  The hospital attorney also made it clear that the hospital had the technical ability to download the record but simply refused to do so.

            This is another example of corporate greed and total disregard for the rights of patients.  As noted above, federal law requires that Exempla St. Joseph Hospital charge no more than the actual cost of copying the medical record for a patient.  It does not cost the $400 plus to press a button on a computer to download a medical record onto a disk or drive.  If you seek an electronic copy of your medical record from this hospital, or any hospital which attempts to deprive you of an electronic record and overcharge you in this manner, file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.                                                                                     

            - Neil Hillyard