Confidentiality and Medical Records: Your medical records are not maintained on-line in this office. It is impossible for a computer hacker to obtain them from a computer.
Your medical records are released only with your consent, and by signing a consent form to have them released.
Medicare requires that all diagnoses be sent to them with every Medicare claim. It is required that we submit a claim for every service that is covered by Medicare, unless the patient signs a waiver stating that he/she does not want coverage for that service to which they are entitled by Medicare.
If you request that an insurance company receive your records, we usually schedule an appointment so we can reveal what information the insurance company will receive. We cannot legally honor a request to only release certain parts of a record and withhold other parts.
There is usually a document preparation fee for copying and sending your medical records. We usually request that it is pre-paid prior to the records release.
Under Arizona law, you own your medical information, but the physical materials (papers, folders, x-rays) belong to the medical practice. It is customary to release copies, and to retain the originals in the medical practice.
We will ask you to provide your medical records from other doctors you have seen. These are not usually released when we have a request for medical records. Under the Arizona state law, each doctor releases the records from his own work.
Please call us for any questions you might have regarding medical records or their confidentiality.
