Transfer Of Medical Records Request: Fill & Download for Free

For our three children, we had a wonderful pediatrician who was very personable and always made time to talk with the kids, treating them like individuals. We also appreciated that her fees were reasonable.One day, we received notice that our doctor was moving from her modest office to a brand new posh building complete with valet, or paid parking. The suite had an enormous salt water aquarium filled with tang, puffer fish and striped eels (I’ve come to think of expensive fish tanks in a doctor’s office as an ominous sign).The new office was across town but we hung in there for a bit, soon to discover that we were charged for the copies of immunization records we used to get for free. We also noticed a pattern with the visits: our beloved pediatrician would enter the room like she was shot from a cannon, give a cursory exam and dispense a prescription based on symptoms listed on the intake form. We couldn’t get a word in edgewise before her hand was already on the door to leave. When we persisted in asking a question, she would half turn back toward us while keeping her hand on the door lever.We started referring to her as “Dr. Door Knob.”Visits went from 8–10 minutes to about 90 seconds.We assumed the change in character and practices was the result of some monetization seminar and the cost of feeding eels.When we received a marketing survey sponsored by the doctor, we answered candidly and were surprised to receive a terse call from an office administrator.We decided maybe it was time to find a new pediatrician.The last straw came when we requested transfer of our medical records and the former pediatrician refused to send them. Instead, we received a call telling us that we had an appointment for a checkup that we hadn’t scheduled.We canceled the appointment and again requested the medical records transfer.We received another uncomfortable call from the administrator asking if and why we intended to change physicians.When we explained our reasons once more, the administrator informed us that there would be a $100 fee to transfer the records. Initially, she seemed to imply that the fee would be per child. When we baulked, she relented to the single fee of $100.We made the switch and never looked back.

Usually, there is a modest copying fee charged for copying or transfer of records, as for most practices, it does take some time to verify that the record request is legitimate, the person sending the records to is an authorized recipient, and the actual copying of the records by medical staff.

If we build an app using EMR vendor sandbox what will we have to do to start getting live data?This depends on the EHR. It’s honestly one of the most frustrating things about the integration space. Epic and Cerner for example - their FHIR “sandboxes” are smoke and mirrors. That’s not to say they don’t have great interoperability (they are two of the best).Look for read/write sandboxes that actually let you do updates - that is a strong indication that the sandbox will be closer to what to you will actually see in production.Will we have to go to each hospital and integrate with them individually?To grow you business in any kind of meaningful way, yes you are going to need to connect to many different health systems around the country. My colleague wrote a brilliant piece about this connectivity problem:The Connectivity Problemtldr; There is no quick fix - you need manpowerWould hospitals allow an app to get health data via patient portal? like and OAuth request where patients enter username/passwordI wish. Blue Button: Use Your Health Records is the closest thing we have to a patient authorizing electronic transfer of information. OAuth is being pencilled in as the Authentication/Authorization model of choice for FHIR, but I’d wager you’ll be waiting a long time before you can actually use it anywhere :(