Cost of getting records from Bayridge Hospital

December 16, 2014

$21 base fee

$0.74 a page for the first 100 pages

$0.38 for every page after 100 pages

I was also not able to read my chart while  I was a patient at Bayridge.  The psychiatrist told me that the human rights officer had told her that patients can get a copy of their records when they are discharged from the hospital.

What a patient can get for free is a "complimentary abstract" of his or her records.  For the grisly entirety, you have to pay.

I think it's a patient right to read his or her records while a patient at every psychiatric hospital or psychiatric unit.  I think the misrepresentation of that right is used against patients so that it is easier to victimize them.  

Also, it seems to me that, whether or not there's a law about it, the first copy of a patient's records should be free.  Mental patients have the right to know what was written in their records, they have the right to know what was said about them.

Copyright L. Kochman, December 16, 2014 @ 11:02 a.m.