Representative Click will soon be introducing the My Child-My Chart Act, which will ensure that Ohio’s parents and legal guardians have online access to their children’s medical records to the fullest extent allowable under Ohio and federal HIPAA law.
Parents and legal guardians around the state have informed our office that their medical service providers have required their pre-teen age children to consent before allowing a parent to access the child’s online medical records. No such consent is required for the same records in physical form. Put simply, this requirement is a needless and unreasonable obstruction for parental rights in Ohio.
If it is legal for parents to view these records as physical copies, why do care providers require a child’s consent for access to the same digitized records? The answer is that most online medical record hosts like MyChart simply do not differentiate records according to whether the parent or child provided consent, as HIPAA compliance would require. Rather than prompting these hosts to separate records, thus increasing transparency, it is easier for care providers to require the child’s consent for all digital records once the child reaches an arbitrary pre-teen age, usually around 12-13 years old.
The My Child-My Chart Act will require care providers and online record hosting services to segregate records to ensure that parents have automatic access to non-protected records. It will also require healthcare providers to provide an opportunity at each annual wellness visit for children to consent to share protected records. This consent will remain in effect until it is revoked in writing or the child reaches the age of majority.
Parents in Ohio should be empowered to raise their children with the greatest possible level of transparency available to them, and the My Child-My Chart Act will be an important step toward that goal. If you have any questions about this bill, or might be interested in providing testimony when it is heard in committee, please reach out!
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