Please Read BEFORE You File an Application for Social Security Disability
At Unbound Disability Claims, we talk a lot about getting applicants approved in months instead of years. Most know that the current system is broken. However, many applicants do not know that there is more to the problem than just the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Your medical records can make or break your disability claim. Complete and accurate medical records are the key to getting approved with your initial application for disability benefits.
There is only one problem with this, medical records are often difficult to retrieve, even for the experts. Physician offices and healthcare information management companies make applicants jump through hoops to gain access to their records.
History
This problem has only accelerated since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) amendment in 2020. The HITECH Act was first created in 2009 to encourage practices to adopt health information technology, specifically electronic health records. In the process, it limited the amount offices could charge patients for copies of medical records to $6.50 or less. The original act also expanded HIPAA protections and increased penalties for HIPAA violations. These new regulations were intended to protect patients from the extreme prices of healthcare and to protect their privacy.
In 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided guidance to [AM1] the HITECH Act to extend the price limits of medical records to third parties, such as lawyers and representatives. However, this guidance was challenged in the federal court case: Ciox Health, LLC v. Azar. Ciox Health, a major healthcare information management company, sued the HHS claiming that the HITECH ruling and the HHS’s later guidance were negatively affecting their business because the $6.50 fee does not relate to the costs of providing patient information. The courts sided with Ciox Health and overruled the 2016 HHS guidance, again excluding third parties from the $6.50 predetermined fee.
What does this mean for me?
I know you must be wondering what all this means for you and your disability application. Under the 2020 HITECH ruling, you can still retrieve your own records for $6.50 or less. However, if you hire a third-party to retrieve your records, the healthcare information management companies can charge whatever they want for your records.
This becomes a problem for applicants when you consider the process of retrieving your own records:
You call your doctors to ask where you can send your record request.
You prepare a record request and sign all required documents.
You fax or mail your request to your physician’s office.
You call back a week later to make sure they received your record request. (Many times, they have not, and you will need to resend the request).
You wait weeks or months for the request to be processed and mailed or electronically delivered.
You receive your invoice, charging you the fee for your records.
To people struggling with a severe medical condition and financial distress — this process is too daunting to complete alone. That is why many applicants hire a disability representative or a disability expert to retrieve the records for them. For third-parties, medical records can cost $200 or more! This in turn causes third parties to pass the fees along to you or take the financial blow of retrieving medical records as an independent third-party.
But there is more …
If the increase in prices for medical records was not scary enough, healthcare information management companies are not always giving you the correct information.
Unbound Disability Claims recently had an appalling experience with one of the three major healthcare information management companies. We sent a record request to a physician’s office on behalf of an applicant to retrieve records for their claim. Almost two months after sending our initial request we finally received the record. In the envelope, there was an invoice and a letter. The letter was only a paragraph long and stated that the applicant was not a patient at the office. The invoice charged us $25 for the letter.
If we were not experts, we would have accepted this answer. We were able to retrieve complete and accurate records for the applicant at the physician’s office despite the erroneous information in the letter. This record was crucial to the applicant’s disability claim.
To summarize, the healthcare information management company charged us $25 for a paragraph-long letter with incorrect information.
Records should not be this difficult to retrieve!
You should not have to wait weeks or months to get your records.
You should not have to question whether your record is accurate.
You should not have to pay higher fees, simply because companies are charging third-party providers large sums of money — for the same record that costs you $6.50 — if you are able to get the correct records on your own.
We are passionate about getting you awarded your maximum disability benefits. We offer many free and paid tools that you can use to create a convincing claim for disability benefits. Click the links below to learn more.
If DIY is not your thing, do not worry, we also offer paid services so you can focus on your health. Click below to schedule a free consultation.
We know what it feels like to be uncertain … and we hope that our resources eliminate any doubt or uncertainty that you may be feeling.
Still have questions? Simply send us an email: helpme@unboundclaims.com
Do you have a medical record horror story? Please share in the comments.