Can you request to have your medical records destroyed?

Answer 1

I have been trying for over a year and a half even to have medical records corrected. I have contacted the Office of Civil Right, HIPAA

Division, my Congressional representative and every State authority about some totally horrible medical records (53% lies and character assassination.) I have even tried to simply have them sealed, and this has also proved impossible.

What we can do: demand that Congress give us the power under the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights to demand the destruction of medical or other records that are not considered "vital statistics" such as birth, marriage, death, diplomas, etc. All medical records should be available for destruction at the patient's

request. It is far easier to get criminal records sealed than medical records!

In the mean time, under HIPAA,

demand that no records of yours may be released in any form to any human or machine under any circumstances without your witnessed wet signature. If the provider accepts this restriction, and they release your records without your witnessed wet signature, CONTACT HIPPA,

AND YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY!This happened to me, and I raised H_ _ _ about it. Now every time there is a request, I get a phone call and I at least get to know who is requesting my records, and I can deny access, or intervene or request a Motion to Quash. Most people do not realize how powerful that right it. The Motion to Quash is a court intervention which denies access to information and it is very powerful. It also allows you to keep a tab on who is looking into your private health records.

What is unfortunate is that I spend hours trying to clean up the mess that this particular health provider caused by releasing my records against their own agreement not to release my records.

Next, get together a list of every doctor, clinic or hospital that has treated you in the last 10 years, and send a certified letter to them demanding disclosure of everyone that they have sent any part of your records to. Then contact that other person/party and demand to know what was sent, and file corrections as necessary. If enough people demand this, then providers will begin to take patient privacy seriously. This is a lot of paperwork, but if you want to protect yourself, you have to do more than wish. You have to write!

Understand completely, that even if you file rebuttals, corrections or amendments to your medical records, all that the provider is required to do by law is include your writings in your file. They are supposed to - by law - forward these corrections to anyone else that they have sent your records to, but this does not necessarily happen. Further - and this is SO important - the 2nd party is not required by law to include and process those corrections. It works like this: Hospital sends records to Clinic. You demand that Hospital correct its records. Hospital puts your corrections in your file and is also supposed to send your corrections to Clinic, but Clinic is not under obligation to accept those corrections except that you also write and demand that Clinic accept the corrections, along with a copy of the corrections that you send to Hospital.

I have been going through a nightmare about this! If enough of us demand that Congress give us the right to control our own medical records, then perhaps something can happen. Right now, it seems that each provider takes his/her own medical history, and thus the right to destroy medical records seems of little concern, but there are those who want a central database of all our medical treatment. Nothing terrifies me more! Not only is this a privacy invasion beyond description but the patient does not even have the ability to get errors corrected!!!! Foolish example would be - it was my left foot that was operated on not my right foot. You cannot get that fixed in your medical records! You may only write a rebuttal. So you send a rebuttal to the hospital saying that if was your left foot that was operated on, not your right foot. The hospital is supposed to send that information onto anyone who got the original information that says your right foot was operated on. The clinic does not have to follow up with correcting your medical records that it was your left foot that was operated on, and in theory would either treat your right foot, which has no medical issues in the first place or charge your differently than a follow up over the left foot that should have been in the medical records in the first place. This is the level of risk we have right now. The only thing we have in our favor is that most of the medical professionals, seeing no stitches on the right foot, will remove the stitches from the left foot without changing their billing practices. Legally they can charge you differently.

We simple citizens are at the mercy of this! Until Congress et

al

starts treating us as adults who have the right to exercise judgment about our own medical records, we will continue to have to chase after those who simply do not care about our issues or our privacy, or the risk that tawdry medical records pose to those of us who are dealing with them.

Willie D.