Federal and State Laws

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Several states provide no guarantees for medical record privacy and others vary widely as to what kind of disclosure they will permit. Only 28 states allow patients access to their own medical records and 34 states have laws protecting confidentiality.

Also at present, there is no comprehensive federal law that protects individual's health records from being exploited.

In the fall of 1995, Robert Bennett (R. Utah) and Patrik Leahy (D. Vermont) introduced a bill that would provide a uniform national standard for protecting medical records.

On December 20, 2000 President Clinton presented the final version of medical privacy regulations drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services(HHS). The regulations are the first federal privacy protections for medical information and is applicable to both paper and electronic health records.