Federal rule gives patients direct access to lab reports
Patients no longer have to call their phy- sicians to get the results of a lab test un- der a new federal rule that gives patients direct access to the reports.
The Department of Health and Hu-
man Services (HHS) action amends ear- lier federal requirements that patients access their lab tests through their phy- sicians. Patients can continue to do so, but the new flexibility “gives patients a new option to obtain their test reports directly from the laboratory, while main- taining strong protections for patients’ privacy,” HHS announced in February. Under certain circumstances, individ- uals designated by or representing the
patient can see or obtain a copy of the patient’s protected health information, including an electronic copy. The final regulation acknowledges concerns that a number of physicians and laboratories expressed during rule- making about giving patients a way to receive laboratory test reports “without the benefit of provider interpretation and without contextual knowledge that may be necessary to properly read and understand the reports.” For example, physicians and labs cau-
tioned that patients might receive and act upon results that appear to be abnor- mal — such as showing false positives or false negatives — or results that are out of the normal range for the general population but may be normal for that particular patient. But HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said “information like lab results can empower patients to track their health progress, make decisions with their
health care professionals, and adhere to important treatment plans.” Support- ers, such as consumer advocacy groups, agreed the change would give patients the chance to play a more active role in their health care and have more in- formed conversations with their health care providers, resulting in better health outcomes.
HHS officials pointed to studies show- ing physician practices sometimes fail to inform patients of abnormal test re- sults, “resulting in a substantial number of patients not being informed by their providers of clinically significant tests re- sults.” Those studies show that happens about 7 percent of the time.
The final rule is available online
in the Federal Register,
http://1.usa .gov/1luzMC6. n
Amy Lynn Sorrel is the associate editor of Texas Medi- cine. You can reach her by telephone at (800) 880-1300, ext. 1392, or (512) 370-1392; by fax at (512) 370-1629; or by email at
amy.sorrel@
texmed.org.
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