Who Can Your Medical Records be Shared With?

There are three particular categories which are considered covered by the HIPAA privacy rule. These entities would be insurance companies, healthcare providers and of course medical billing centers. Healthcare providers who transmit any of your health information electronically will be covered by these privacy rules. In fact, even a smaller practice which only keeps paper records will more than likely still utilize some sort of billing service which uses electronic transmission submit and receive electronic medical records . Healthcare providers can be defined as dentists, doctors offices, hospitals, pharmacies, as well as medical laboratories.

To sum it up any organization that is responsible for providing you with some sort of healthcare and is licensed and regulated by the state they live in is covered. In addition, these organizations are permitted by law to share your records with any medical billing agency that will be handling submissions to insurance companies as well as collecting funds from people who are self pay. This means that your medical records may be shared between other healthcare providers, pharmacists and medical billing agencies. However, they are not able to be shared with any other individual or organization that is not involved in the healthcare profession or medical billing profession. In order for any doctor or health care worker to re-lease any of your medical information to another entity, you must sign what is called a release of information. If you find any of your medical information has been released to an individual or entity that you did not authorize, then you are entitled to seek compensation as well as possibly even file suit. For more information on the HIPAA privacy rule then you may go online to the official website or do a quick Google search. You may also ask your health care worker to explain the latest privacy rule works so that you can be sure that you understand your privacy and your rights.