poppy
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 5355
posted
Here is a newspaper story from last year with important information for patients. I am going to copy and paste the whole thing here for future reference. Seems like this ought to be in a sticky at the top somewhere.
I think everyone who is going to a lyme doc is going to want the doc's viewpoint on the results, but also everyone should be keeping copies of their own results at home in a file. But those non-lyme docs may not be fully informed, and you want those results for future reference.
New Rule Grants Patients Direct Access to Lab Results
By Melinda Beck, Wall St. Journal
Feb. 3, 2014 1:05 p.m. ET
Clinical laboratories must give patients access to their own lab-test results upon request, without going through the physician who ordered them, according to a new federal rule announced Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The rule, first proposed in 2011, is part of an Obama administration effort to give patients more control over their own health information.
"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," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. My Tests, Please
Labs will have to give patients their results upon request
7 states and District of Columbia already require labs to give patients direct access 13 states had prohibited it 22,861 labs will need new procedures for handling requests $2 million to $10 million estimated cost to develop these procedures 175,646 to 3.5 million expected requests a year
Department of Health and Human Services
The final rule amends two existing federal laws, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, and the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, or CLIA, which regulates most of the clinical testing labs in the U.S.
Patient advocacy groups had also pushed for the change.
"A number of patients are getting increasingly active in managing their own health care, and having a gatekeeper between them and their data is just baffling," said Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.
Studies show that between 7% and 26% of abnormal lab results are not communicated to patients in a timely manner. "I don't think it's intentional—doctor's offices get busy," Ms. McGraw said. "But patients may assume their test results are normal if they don't hear, and that's not always the case."
Physician groups including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians had expressed concern that patients might overreact to results without a doctor's interpretation, and urged that the data carry a disclaimer.
The final rule didn't include such a notice, but said doctors could still proactively report the results to patients and would likely receive them before patients do, since the law gives labs 30 days to comply with a patient request.
Seven states and the District of Columbia already require labs to give patients their data directly. Thirteen states expressly prohibit it; seven allow it only with the health-care provider's permission; and 23 states have no policy on it, according to HHS. The new rule supersedes all those state laws.
HHS estimates that 22,861 labs don't have procedures in place to give patients direct access to their data, and that developing them will cost those labs $2 million to $10 million combined. HHS estimates the affected labs will receive between 175,646 and 3.5 million patient requests a year.
Reid Blackwelder, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, called the new rule a "safety net—so that patients know you can get your lab results from another avenue. But it does not remove the responsibility of the provider to make sure we communicate what the results mean for you."
Jon Cohen, senior vice president and chief medical officer at laboratory company Quest Diagnostics Inc., called the new rule "a huge win for patients who want to take responsibility for their health care and engage in a richer dialogue with their clinicians in the interest of making informed clinical decisions."
Quest said more than one million Americans have signed up for its Gazelle app, which sends test results to their smartphones in states that already permit it. The data is typically sent three days after the request is received, Quest said, giving physicians time to contact patients first.
posted
For LabCorp, I signed up for Labcorp Beacon where I get the results via email notification. I sign into my account and every labcorp test result is available to me.
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