How Much Can Doctors Charge for Medical Records?
Occasionally we all get doctor’s office that charge way too much money to get a copy of their patient’s medical records. Did you know there was a statute that limits how much the health care provider can charge?
- $15.00 for the search
- $0.65 for the first 30 pages
- $0.50 for all other pages
- Actual cost for reproduction of x-rays
I was aware of Sec. 44–115–80 limiting the amounts that physicians can charge. John Nichols pointed me to Sec. 44–7–325 for health care facilities.
John also points us to Sec.38–77–341(5), which makes it an unfair trade practice under Sec. 39–5–20 for a health care facility or health care provider to charge a fee in excess of the permissible amount.They don't want to get into Title 39, because if the violation is found to be wilful, they pay treble damages and attorney's fees! Ouch.
Usually a strongly worded letter at this point will resolve the situation.
Thanks for pointing out the SC statute for health care facilities.
Due to my firm's experience with doctors and hospitals attempting to overcharge our clients when we are requesting their medical records, we have posted a listing of relevant statutes for the different states on this web page: http://www.lamblawoffice.com/medical-records-copying-charges.html
We will be adding a link to the SC statute and a summary of its permitted costs on our web page in the near future.
Dave - one way to save money and hassle is to get "x-rays" on CD. Many images are now stored electronically and you can the images downloaded to a CD. If you request the images will come with a free "reader."
Obviously, the CD makes it easier to ship the x-rays to your expert.
Dave - one way to save money and hassle is to get "x-rays" on CD. Many images are now stored electronically and you can the images downloaded to a CD. If you request the images will come with a free "reader."
Obviously, the CD makes it easier to ship the x-rays to your expert.
John,
I agree with you. We've seen a shift in the past 3 years of getting the x-rays on disk. The doctors and medical facilities are going digital more and more. That really helps our goals of digitizing the information.
