How the Ciox Case Changed Medical Record Requests
on October 2021
As written in the October 2021 issue of Compliance Today magazine.
Attorneys Laura Fryan and Nicole Thorn co-authored an article in Compliance Today titled “How the Ciox Case Changed Medical Record Requests.” The article addresses the January 2020 ruling in Ciox Health, LLC, v. Alex Azar changing the way healthcare providers could charge for medical records, and overruling longstanding guidance from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).
Ciox Health, a national medical records provider that produces individuals’ protected health information (PHI), received several complaints from the Office of Civil Rights that it charged excessive fees for providing medical records. Eventually, Ciox Health filed its lawsuit to challenge the guidance from HHS restricting fees for medical records. Under the recent ruling, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia sided with Ciox Health and ruled that HHS had overstepped its authority in restricting fees for medical records in certain instances. Now healthcare providers can set their own charges for requests made by a patient, when the patient directs the records to be sent to a third-party, or by third parties (with valid authorization). For health care providers and third-party vendors like Ciox, this case is a major win, after multiple challenges.
Here is a
link to view a PDF of the article.
Here is a
link to read the full article.
Copyright 2021
Compliance Today, a publication of the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA).
