HIPAA Form and Getting Medical Records

[Frank Stastny]

Don't doctors normally charge a fee for getting together an APS and sending it in? I am under the impression that the insurance company normally take care of the that (up to a limit), so what do you recommend in those cases?

The times I have personally gone to pick up the records I have had some doctor offices give them to me and others said there was a charge. When a charge was involved I just paid it. It wasn't usually excessive and it was worth it to me to speed up the underwriting process.

I have had it take as long as two and a half months for the doctor to send in the APS. At that point telling the client that it is the doctors fault sounds like a cop-out to them. "Their doctor couldn't possibly be at fault". I have even had them cancel because the "insurance company" was jerking them around, so they thought.

That is why I always got the current name, address and phone number of each doctor they have seen, even though the information wasn't requested on the app. It gave me a lot more control over getting the APS from each if necessary.

Sometimes you have to spend a little money to make money.