vrendon

I am a registered health information administrator. I think you might have a case for appealing your unemployment if nothing else. Suggestions: First: I would review the ROI form that your son signed to review the dates. Most releases are for a specific date and are not open-ended. If there was and end date, did you request/receive information after that end date? If not, you had the right to access the information it is how you accessed it that is in question. Second: The HIM department is responsible for delivering charts to physician offices, not family members. In this instance, you were involved in your son's care as a family member and not a healthcare giver. You should not have asked for the chart itself and the HIM department should have not handed it to you. They are the keepers of medical records and should have proactively asked you if the chart was needed for patient care. HIM has got to get out of the habit of turning records over to healthcare givers just because they work at the hospital. Third: Not sure what the set-up was like with the physician's office, but it sounds like this dictation should have come from the HIM department and not the physician's office. Quite frankly, the hospital is likely to say that you used your position to get information rather than going through the proper channels. Even if you have a ROI signed, you do not have the right to access information yourself and must go through the proper channels to do so.