Full Table of Contents
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Abbreviated
Table of Contents

Home Page
Patient Safety
Silence vs
    Safety
Silenced
White wall
    of Silence
Silencing
Conflict Of
    Interest
Psychology of
    Providers
Subjectivity
Blacklisting  
Nurse survey
Loyalty
Mobbing and
    bullying
Trust Us
Defensive
    documenting
Report Rate
Risk
    managemnt
SOAP
Management
Hospitals
Crime in
    medicine
Sexual Abuse
Liability
    Limitations
Free Speech
    for Patients
Exploitation

OSMB Medical
    Boards
Mammography
solutions
Medical errors
Medical Complaints
One number
Links

 

Injured patients who want to help and be heard, click here.

 

Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would choose newspapers.

In medicine we have government without newspapers. Patients cannot find out what they need to know to make informed choices. No one in medicine records or reports the information patients need to know the most. So patients will have to do it.

Release of Medical Information

To get anyone to release your records requires giving them a legal document allowing them to release your records. Click below to print one out.

The Release.  After opening it hit "cntrl + P" to print it, then hit your back button to return here. Changing HIPAA regulations could cause your provider to send a different release form for you to fill out. This often can be done through faxes or mail or email without your having to travel to their office.

Usually your signature on it does not have to be notarized.

If you are not sure what records to request, next to "Other" write "everything." Although if it is a doctor with whom you have had a long relationship, you don't need everything and they could be unenthusiastic about so capriciously having been asked to make copies of so much work.

Below are examples of records you may need to attach to your complaint.

Primary Care Physician Charts - the notes surrounding the event that explain why you needed care in the first place, and what the results were afterwards. Although be sure to read written policy and white wall of silence for how fruitless such notes can be, and creating a record for one thing you can do about it.

Notes of other doctors - anyone who has helped to diagnose whatever problems have resulted.

Post Operative Report - When you ask for the "Post Op Report" sometimes they think that you need only the summary written by the surgeon, but you might need all of it which could be ten or twenty pages. For one thing, the names of the nurse witnesses are on it. You might need a medical professional to help interpret this report.

X-rays and such like will be released to you too, but be careful. They usually give you the original. Normally there is no reason to pay for having a copy made. And insurance probably will not cover having a copy made. But when patients deliver x-rays to doctors who are not sympathetic to examinations that could indict other doctors, things like x-rays can get "lost." If you have had a problem in medicine, you are better off paying to have copies made. Even if they do not get lost, they can be tied up for months while someone else wants to look at them. If the state board investigates your case, they won't tell you they have subpoenaed your x-rays. You won't know that your case is in a "hold" file indefinitely awaiting the arrival of a document that might be in your car. If what is in your car is only a copy, things keep moving along.

Complaints Home | Complaints Form | Instructions | State Boards

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Home | Table of Contents | It's a Path
Silence versus Patient Safety
Loyalty versus Patient Safety
The White Wall of Silence versus Patient Safety
Blacklisting Patients
Freedom of Speech for Patients
Medical Complaints - How to

 < Truth / Justice / Patient Safety >
It's a path

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Revised August 29, 2010