Senate Bill 3171

Senate Bill 3171 (Brady, R-Bloomington-Normal; Sullivan, D-Rushville) integrates Illinois’ medical records’ statute with the 2003 federal Privacy Rule. (1) The federal Department of HHS has interpreted the federal Privacy Rule that a patient or their representative may not be charged a “handling” or “retrieval” fee; the only fees that may be charged are reasonable per-page fees. This change makes clear that this protection applies as well to a patient’s personal representative under the recently enacted medical records’ statute at § 8-2001.5. (2) Under the federal Privacy Rule release of medical records is required to be given to a decedent’s executor or administrator or “or other person who has authority to act on behalf of a deceased individual or of the individual’s estate. Senate Bill 3171 makes this change to reflect federal law as well. (3) This requires that a person purporting to be a personal representative seeking records under this statute must certify that to be true under penalty of perjury so that there is some evidence that is true. This is scheduled for a hearing in House Judiciary I Committee this afternoon.