Health Care Advocate Access to Health Records (H 5915, S 728)

We opposed legislation that would allow the Attorney General’s health care advocate (HCA) to receive unredacted confidential health care information of individuals without consent. The bill was introduced under the premise that it often takes too long for the HCA to get the records in redacted form, but we noted our concern for patient privacy and the broad authority this could give to the HCA to access sensitive personally-identifiable information.