Empowering Patient-Centered Care – Will New OCR Guidance be Enough?
Richmond partner Erin Whaley was quoted in a February 22 HIStalk article about the new guidance from the Office of Civil Rights on how providers can best comply with patient private health information requests in a timely manner that doesn’t burden the patient with delay or expense. Erin states that because patients have been in the dark about their access rights, providers have in turn not rushed to make the process of delivering PHI efficient.
“These processes may be antiquated for a variety of reasons,” she says. “For instance, some providers still require individuals to deliver a request for access in person so that the individual’s identity can be confirmed. The provider isn’t trying to create a barrier to access. They’re trying to employ a best practice to verify the authenticity of a request.”