Your Right to Medical Records After Treatment

Medical record access remained an important patient-rights issue in 2025. In December 2025, HHS's Office for Civil Rights announced its 54th HIPAA Right of Access enforcement action, a $112,500 settlement with a provider that took more than a year to fulfill a patient's records request.  

Medical treatment is always important, but can patients request their medical records?

Under HIPAA, individuals can request a broad range of health information. This is the right of a patient to be able to review and obtain copies of their medical records. This should include billing information, laboratory results, X-rays, treatment notes, and other information maintained in a designated record set. 

Psychotherapy notes constitute one major exception. The healthcare provider is not obligated to provide access to psychotherapy notes under the federal rules.

In most situations, healthcare providers should respond to record requests within 30 days. Also, there may be an option for extending that period by 30 more days.

If the healthcare provider denies providing the requested documents, delays them, or provides partial information, knowledge of HIPAA protection rules will help you figure out what to do next.

The Federal Rule is Thirty Days, Plus One Extension

The HHS makes it clear in its language about the timeline. The covered entity must respond to a request for access not more than 30 days from the receipt of the request. It may take an additional 30 days provided the covered entity explains within the first 30 days why the request cannot be completed at the time.

The obligation is to produce the records or to deny access in writing on one of the narrow permitted grounds. Silence is not a third option, though some providers treat it as one. 

State rules sit on top of that floor, and practices working across a state line end up tracking two versions of the answer.

States Set Their Own Terms, And Some Are Tighter

The State of Connecticut makes for an excellent case study since it provides a figure for the cost. According to Connecticut’s general statute, the provider must provide the record requested within thirty days, and the rate charged cannot exceed sixty-five cents per page. The latter includes expenses such as research fees, handling fees, associated costs, and first-class postage fees.

The provider may refuse to disclose any information that it feels will be detrimental to the physical or mental well-being of the patient or is liable to prompt the patient to cause self-harm or harm to another individual. Within thirty days of such refusal, the patient may approach the courts and request the disclosure of information.

Records work sits at the very front of one particular kind of case.

A Connecticut medical malpractice lawyer at Buckley Wynne & Parese, which runs offices in New Haven, Hartford, and Stamford, lists misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, anesthesia errors, emergency room negligence, surgical errors, and birth injuries as separate categories and points at the medical record as the evidence behind all of them. Nothing on that list gets assessed without the chart.

Fees Are Where Most Disputes Actually Start

The federal position on cost is narrower than many billing departments behave as though it is. HHS tells patients that a provider may charge reasonable costs for copying and mailing records and may not charge a fee for searching for or retrieving them.

This matters because search and retrieval is exactly what an outsourced records vendor charges. A three hundred dollar invoice for a two hundred page chart often carries line items the federal rule does not permit, and a patient who cites the rule may be able to get the bill revised. 

HHS also flags that its access guidance is subject to a court order in Ciox Health, LLC v. Azar. That litigation concerned directing copies to third parties rather than a patient's request for their own copy.

Why Records Slow Down When a Claim is in the Air

Nothing about a request has to mention a lawyer. Some patients find that a request for a complete chart from one specific admission takes longer to fill. 

A request for the complete chart from one admission can take longer. This is because nurses’ notes, imaging, and later addenda may sit in separate systems. Also, each missing piece may need its own request. 

Audit trails stand apart from the others. Electronic systems document what was opened when, even post hoc edits, and this metadata proves more useful than the narrative layered above it.

A records request is not an accusation, and the law does not treat it as one. It is the one part of this process a patient controls outright, available at any point, for any reason or none, with a deadline attached to somebody else.