18May

Penrose St Francis Hospital blocking faxed records request

By Tomasz Stasiuk, May 18th, 2010 | Doctors Records & Treatment, SSA News | 3 Comments

Penrose St Francis Hospital, one of the two major hospitals in Colorado Springs, sent me the following canned response to a (faxed) request for records for one of my clients.

Please note that the fax number you are sending your request to is for physician use only.

…

Medical records requests from law firms need to be mailed to our facility in order to be processed.

Penrose St Francis is refusing lawyers from faxing requests for medical records. Penrose St Francis has a fax number for requests. They even use an third party medical copying service for processing record requests (so, it is not like nurses have to take time out from helping patients to copy files). They just do not want lawyers using the fax line. If you are doctors’ office, fax away. However, lawyers representing disabled patients are prohibited.

How does this affect you as a patient and Social Security claimant? Longer wait times for records! It is already common to wait 30 days or longer for medical copiers to provide records (especially if the copier is out of state). Now, Penrose St Francis is adding delays in getting records to patients and their attorneys, thereby creating another delay in the Social Security system!

Tomasz Stasiuk is the founding attorney of the Stasiuk Firm - a law firm devoted to exclusively handling Social Security disability cases in Colorado. Contingent fees available.

Margaret

Astounding!

hat reason could they have for doing this. Handling fax requests is not more labor intensive than handling the same request by mail. It seems designed to inconvenience patients who need lawyers.
Agentgirl007

Maybe they don't want hundreds of disability lawyers, disability determination service, and the social security administration clogging up their urgent requests for emergencies and coordinating care between physicians.
http://www.ColoradoSocialSecurityLaw.com TomaszStasiuk

And that's fine… until you're injured at work or in a MVA and you are fighting with your insurance company. Ok, that's a bit cheeky.

Assuming that patients should take a back seat to medical providers, there is a simple solution: have a second fax number. It can be a super-secret number that is only given to doctors office's and provides prioritized service.

Letting one group fax requests for immediate attention while refusing another group is an unnecessary snub.

We are just talking about *sorting* requests, the actual “copying” (printing really) and providing records is done through third party specialty copiers. A second fax number would handle the sorting issue better that dealing with physical mail anyway.