McLean County Times

A bill that requires healthcare facilities or healthcare practitioners to notify a patient when their record has been altered is being discussed in the Illinois House Rules Committee. Rep. Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur) spoke about the importance of the bill for patents across the state.

“This bill is about patient records. It's about the patient. It's about the ability to know what's in your record in real and accurate time,” Caulkins said about House Bill 1137 at a press briefing on Jan. 31. “It's also about knowing if there's been any change to your record that you weren't aware of at the time that you were discharged or since the last time you looked at your record. What this bill is not about is changes like a prescription renewal or billing. Things that aren't really substantive. But what we're addressing here is the ability of a patient or their representative to know that the record that they're looking at accurately reflects the diagnosis and the treatment that they received.”

House Bill 1137 was introduced on Jan. 12 by Caulkins and has been assigned to the House Rules Committee. It requires facilities and healthcare officials to notify in writing when they alter the patient’s record within three business days of the alteration. The bill requires a healthcare facility or practitioner to provide an electronic copy of an altered record within seven days of a patient’s request.

“What we hope to accomplish here is to give patients an opportunity or the comfort of knowing what they're seeing in their medical records is the most current and up-to-date version,” Caulkins said. “Not all of us, I don't think, go in and check their medical records all the time. We have a procedure or we have a doctor's appointment and we may go check to make sure that the medications that we were prescribed or the procedures that were done were accurately portrayed. What we don't necessarily see is if, down the road, a change is made in that record."

Caulkins said the goal is to let people know within 72 hours of the entry into medical records that they will be notified. This could be a change of medication, change of diagnosis or just a follow-up change. Caulkins said this is all about being as efficient as possible for the benefit of the patient and for healthcare officials to do their work properly.

“We are going to be working on this bill in the next couple of weeks in the House and I want to emphasize this is a patient-centered effort,” Caulkins said. “What we want to do is make sure that the patient is notified in a timely manner anytime their medical records are changed in a substantial way.”