Our inspection of the records is permitted by the Health & Safety Act, section 123110 et seq. “Every person having ultimate responsibility for decisions respecting his or her own health care also possesses a concomitant right of access to complete information respecting his or her condition and care provided.”

The law requires that :”any patient or patient’s representative shall be entitled to copies of all or any portion of the patient records that he or she has a right to inspect, upon presenting a written request to the health care provider specifying the records to be copied.” We made such written request to you in writing. You made no objections to the inspection of the records and produced them voluntarily.

First of all, you did not have one of the volumes for xxx available today, despite our request to you for having all records available. Second, you apparently have no policies of photographic restrictions in your office since you discussed this with your supervisor who then told you not to permit us to make copies or take photographs of the records.

You indicated that the law requires that copies of the medical records must only be made by Kaiser and payment for such copies done in advance. Furthermore, you indicated that it may take up to 15 days to make such copies. You stated that the law does not permit us to make photographic copies of the records and refused to allow us to proceed further in making such photographic copies.

I am not sure how Kaiser differentiates between a photographic copy and a xerographic copy and why Kaiser feels that the law permits a xerographic copy to be made but does not permit a photographic copy. Surely, there cannot be any difference in the informational content, is there?

The law only requires that we pay a fee to Kaiser to defray the cost of copying the records. Obviously, since we are taking pictures as our copies, Kaiser has not and cannot claim that they incurred any costs at all. Kaiser therefore cannot demand payment from us, as you did, to make copies for us and prevent us from making photographic copies ourselves. As you know, the intent of the law is to provide access to the medical records, not to restrict access to the records or allow Kaiser to make money by demanding that they make copies of the records.

I have some very unfortunate personal experience with Kaiser’s disregard for patient privacy. It’s another story I’ll be telling in detail when the time is right.

This is how they play it:

They twist the HIPAA laws one way to make it difficult for patients to gain access to their own medical records, or for attorneys and investigators. Anything that might make Kaiser look bad.

But when they want to release something to investigators that they can use to paint the patient in a bad light, suddenly they are required by law to turn over this confidential information, even against the patient’s express directive. This is what they did to me. After refusing to release my records to investigators before I signed the authorization, they didn’t comply with the limitations set by the same form they made me sign.

The law is very one sided — make that lopsided — when you’re up against Kaiser and the bottom feeders they call legal counsel.

Kaiser wants to sound like it is cooperating and protecting patient privacy, because they ALWAYS try to control the message, but as usual there is an ulterior motive.