Under Florida statutes, records owners are charged with "maintaining a record of all disclosures of information contained in the medical record to a third party, including the purpose of the disclosure request." (FL Stat 456.057)

The disclosure accounting "may be maintained" in the medical record, in which case it would be accessible to a patient who requests access to his/her own record. The statute does not say that it must be so maintained, and is silent otherwise on the patient's right of access to the accounting. But the spirit of the provision, if not the letter, seems to be that patients should have such access.

Note that any third party to whom/which such information is disclosed is prohibited from further disclosures of "any information in the medical record without the expressed written consent [authorization] of the patient or the patient's legal representative."

The disclosure accounting requirement here appears to be more stringent than under HIPAA, and so would not be preempted. HIPAA's disclosure accounting provisions include a large range of exceptions.

Note that the above does not apply to hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, which are regulated under different statutes (in chapter 395). There is no provision in the latter statutes for disclosure accounting by such entities. It is hard to imagine a justification for a fundamentally different standard for them, however.

See also:

• Florida preemption (HIPAA)

Last modified: 15-May-2005 [RC]