Regulating the cost of obtaining medical records

If you want to get a copy of your own medical records in New Jersey, it could wind up costing you an arm and a leg.

Under current rules, doctor's offices and hospitals can charge you as much as $1 per page to copy a medical record, even if that record is several hundred pages long.

One Garden State lawmaker doesn't think that's fair, so he's introduced a measure to change things.

"What my bill would do is put a cap on it, $100 would be the maximum amount anybody would have to pay, and if you wanted to get an electronic copy of your medical records it would be $50," said Assemblyman Bob Andrzejczak (D-Cape May).

He stressed the idea behind the legislation is simply to force doctors and hospitals to be fair.

"If you go to a doctor it's your case, your information, your records, yet in a lot of cases doctor's offices charge a great amount of money for you to be able to get them," he said.

Andrzejczak said the elderly and patients with ongoing problems may have a bigger medical file than most people and that's going to cost more, which is simply not right.

"Nobody should be worrying about getting the funding to be able to obtain their own medical records," he said. "It should be readily accessible if you need it. A lot of people cannot necessarily afford multiple hundred dollar increments as far as being able to receive their medical records."

The measure has been formally introduced and will be considered by the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee.