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>> q&a sunday at 8 pm eastern and pacific also on c-span. >> at her table this morning, a senior correspondent here to talk about the medical records, what are some of the barriers that patients face when it comes to the access of their electronic medical records? >> sometimes they have difficulty getting hospital or doctors to release them to them. there have also been serious problems with interoperability or the ability of various healthcare systems to send data back and forth and sometimes that also influences whether you can get access to your records . >> according to your reporting, there are new rules out that will ease patient access to electronic medical records, what are these new rules? >> it's under the 21st-century cures act, there's a number of provisions it's a big law with a lot of different things in it but in terms of electronic

health records, it attacks of this concept of information blocking that's been going on, the inability to share information and it has firm provisions that allow people to get access to the records for low-cost or for free. this should sound easy but as has happened many times throughout the years, a lot of people have had difficulty getting the medical records, especially when you're in an unhappy customer and you ask the hospital to send it to you and you get the runaround. they are going to be cracking down on that . >> you say blocks, get blocked from accessing your record. how? >> you can get blocked but usually when they're talking about blocking their also talking about the people, the manufacturers of electronic health records who sometimes have gag clauses in their contracts that prohibit and are

making any kind of comment like that and that is one of the things they're trying to attack in order to stop the information blocking . >> people have to pay to access their information and data? >> they should, traditionally there's always been some kind of service charge levy, when records, back in the day in a lot of ways they still are in a lot of places but when it was on paper they used to charge you a nominal amount to provide your records but now you're talking about the ability, you're hoping you can soon get the ability to just push a button and there's your record and that is what the hope is that people will be able to do that . >> how widespread is the use of electronic medical record? >> pretty much everywhere, 10 years ago it's 10% but they are widely used. the problem is they are not able to share information. so,

theoretically you should be able to say you're in a different city and you get in a car wreck or something like that and you need immediate access to records in another place, the hope was that you would be able to do that and that the hospital you went to would be able to push a few buttons and be able to access records but that hasn't really happened yet . >> why expect there's a lot of reasons and it depends on who you talk to but a lot of people say that when the government engages $37 billion worth of money to doctors and hospitals to get rid of paper and wire up the business, there was a lot of incentive not to do that. if your hospital you don't necessarily want to have patients going other places so there are economic reasons why you might not want to do that. if you're a manufacturer of these records you may not want to have your competitors be able to get an advantage over you .

>> talking this morning about electronic medical records. if you've had experience with trying to access them or any other story that we want to hear it, if you live in the eastern part of the country or mountain pacific, medical professionals, we want to hear what your experience has been like start dialing in. you wrote this piece, five things to know about your electronic health care records. what are the five things? >> first of all, you need to know how to get access to your records which is a lot easier said than done. i think also that people should be aware of the fact that taxpayers have spent billions of dollars in order to put the system in and many critics think it's been a flop or it

really hasn't worked well, there's also an accountability issue with this. there are concerns that some doctors may be using the electronic health record in order to exaggerate the kind of services they are providing they call this up coding to make more money. there's a lot of controversies around this that people should be aware of. >> creating a host of risks to patient safety and alarming reports of death and near misses tied to software glitches . >> a billion-dollar money just poured into the economy , is a huge chunk for lot of electronic health records, a lot of people thought at the time that the industry was still developing and not very good software with a lot of which is and the system that

sends their records to somebody else and mix that patients and some other kind of flaw in the system and dealing in a hospital with people who are seriously ill and sending test to the wrong place can be disastrous and we could in fact see a number of those . >> we talk about dr. burnout, many doctors spend half the day are more clicking pulldown menus and typing rather than interacting with patients, and emergency room doctors can be settled to making up to 4000 mouse clicks per shift . >> that's pretty astounding, lots of doctors are pretty upset about this and they say i didn't go to medical school to typing click, but i think that patients see this also and now more and more what you're seeing is a doctor typing and looking at a computer screen and typing away and maybe not having as much interaction with you as you would like. what doctors are finding is that you are finding time away from the office trying to catch

up with typing and clicking and it's causing them among other things to get tired of things and want to hang it up . >> brandon, good morning . >> my experience, i've had -- i'm 33 years old and i've had surgery starting back in 2008 and i'm trying to get my medical records into one central location has been difficult. now it's 2019 it's becoming increasingly difficult and it's becoming a challenge and it's not getting easier and there should be a solution by now and were going through this right now and it's taken week to try to get medical records into one centralized factor right now so is there any hope

of this occurring or is it gridlocked? >> there has been gridlock and there's hope in the new regulations are supposed to change things but we have to wait and see whether they do or not. i sympathize with you but you're not alone in the story which we do in fortune magazine , we have some video and we had joe biden who was saying i'm the vice president of the united states and i can't get medical records for my son, he was very frustrated by the is a widespread problem that just about anybody encounters, especially if you have a complicated history and on have been to a lot of different places and you try to get them to talk to each other, it's a very formidable task . >> cocoa beach florida, robert? >> good morning . >> your experience with electronic medical records?

>> i have a question and a question about medical records in general but why is it that different hospitals and doctors offices charge different prices for medical records, in fact my brother just passed, god bless him but i've got medical records on him, about 10,000 pages for free but from the hospital and then i go to the emergency room where he passed away and they want several hundred dollars for the medical records. why is there some discrepancy in pricing and why is it not free? records were on paper, there were state laws that you could only charge so much. now, they can try to charge whatever they want. these new regulations will restrict that, so that should help. host: larry in california. you're trying? caller: yes -- .ost: your turn

they farm out to the person that provides the get mys, so i have to medical records from the same medical group i have been with for 10 years and i have go to each doctor to get my records. . i am starting the process today because they believe a have colon cancer. about inother doctor see for ptsd and anxiety as a vietnam veteran. she doesn't even use the medical records act because she doesn't like it, she actually has to pay a fee. so, why don't we just repeal this and get our money back and stop wasting it down a rabbit hole. that is my question. host: how much money would we need to get back? guest: we have already spent $36 billion to get into the mess we are in now, hopefully there will

be some change at that. i am sorry to hear about your condition, i hope the best for you. you are in a challenging situation, not just with the potential illness, but trying to match all this together. it is a difficult challenge. i hope the best for you. host: in march you wrote -- the ongoing fda commissioner was calling for script stricter scrutiny of electronic health records. why? guest: it is a long-standing issue about whether the software is safe enough and whether it regulated. for over a decade, there has been a back-and-forth, there was a lot of opposition to the fda. the industry says that if you allow the f.d.a. to start regulating this, the it will stifle innovation. critics say there hasn't been a lot of innovation anyway. so this is a long-standing back-and-forth. i think with former commissioner gottlieb, he was talking about

possibly a new framework where it is not precisely regulated like other medical devices, but that it has its own certification and checking to make sure that the software is safe. host: tina in mississippi. caller: hi. i have experienced this from working in the medical field at the clerical department and also as a patient. i was working when the government basically forced this on these doctors, and they give them a time limit to either sign up for lose the funding. it is a nightmare. it is running the medical field as far as i am concerned. you go to the doctor now and sometimes they have your records, sometimes they don't. sometimes their computer is

down. you have topatient, give them new information almost every time you go because they change systems. i actually had important medical records that were lost, cannot be located. the doctor is no longer in practice and it is vital information that i need. and it is nowhere to be found. it is lost in cyberspace or wherever. yes, you make a lot of good points. on this question of adopting the technology, that government position was that doctors haven't really done this. and in fact, they hadn't. they needed some push to get going, so they came up with the idea that they would reimburse doctors and hospitals for some of their cost in order to encourage them to buy the

software. and they also put some penalties in their said if you don't do this, you will have a reduction in your medicare payments. fromnk their reaction doctors or have talked to and hospitals have talked to is mixed. every industry can think of is computerized, and here we are faxing things in medicine. so obviously, many people thought we needed a change. but how it was rolled out and what has become of it are certainly big issues. host: tom from north hills, california. you're on the air. greta. hello, pleasure to speak to you. lte, istion for mr. shu was a member of kaiser permanente for probably 30 years , and they would not let me see my emergency doctor in the circumstance that took place.

they denied me medical services for seven days straight. i have tried for 40 years, mr. schulte, to get my medical records. kaiser permanente refuses. the two culprits who tried to murder me are still they are running the show at panorama city in california. they refused to turn over the records. your attorneys. twice, in two and a letters, $250,000. i refused -- i refuse both of them. i have never seen a kangaroo court in my time until april of 1987. pointtom, what is your question. caller: might point is that they will not give me my had a

medical records. . i have epilepsy because i was in a coma. host: it is a law that you can get access to your medical records? guest: he should be able to get access to them. kaiser permanente was one of the earliest adopters of this technology. this is the first i have heard of a situation like he is describing. host: james, from whitesboro, texas. caller: yes. host: mr. schulte i am glad to see you. done.a procedure the facility was in fresno, texas. they took wonderful history. however, the doctor did not read the medical history and i had a serious reaction to the drug he used. it was clearly on my record as

being something that i had a reaction to. i tried to get -- like i said, i almost died -- i tried to get the records, including all the papers, admission papers that the interviewer took when he was taking the history from me, because it was well document, and now, i can't get that. they say they destroyed the paper records. the electronic records i got, they say -- we don't keep electronic records, from the papers that we use for admission, including the medical history and such and such. i am not quite sure what to do. dr. lopez was the physician at fault here. what should a person like me do? there is no paper record remaining. i can't get the medical records, even though they claim they

exist. they specifically say that the ones that are relevant, they -- cate guest: these are ethical situations. i would need to have more detail , more information's. in any case, i am not an attorney. host: who oversees medical records? guest: the office of national coordinator for health information and technology. host: a mouthful. yes.: they oversee this, as well as the center for medical services, cms. host: lisa in virginia, good morning. . caller: good morning, sorry about that. thest wanted to say that --ctronic medical records [indiscernible]

-- i would assume that the computer systems where those records are stored are 'ompatible with other doctors offices or medical facilities. so it is going to be very difficult to establish the interoperability between doctors offices and other health care offices. but that should not prevent a totor from being able provide the records by either faxing them to the requested doctor's office that the patient .s asking for host: ok. obviously, a lot of people are having trouble getting access to their medical reference. there were a lot of -- there is a lot of software. and what you have is a lot of

situations where they can't communicate with one another. that was maybe the mistake made back when this first rolled out. that is what many critics think, and it is one of the reasons we are in the situation we are in today, that there was no thattance -- an insistence there be a commonality of systems, to be able to talk to each other and easily retrieve information and send it on to the patient. host: frank from new york. caller: hi. i have been in the medical field for 20 years. i worked for one of the biggest surgeons in manhattan. back then, didn't use electronic records. now, i think there are the best thing that ever have and to the medical field. they are more precise, less time-consuming. you were talking about doctors typing into computers, what about when they had to sit down and write them? let me tell you, a doctors

handwriting is very hard to figure out. thing that i think stops people from getting their records freely is the heap of paa laws.he caphi they are very strict. other than that, i don't see the problem. is the best thing that ever happened. guest: i don't think a lot of people are saying, we need to rush back and start putting things on paper again. i think there can be tremendous improvements. what critics of how things have rolled out are saying is that many of the promises made for fruition.not come to some systems may work very, very well, and some doctors may be really happy with it, but that is not the feeling you generally get when you start calling around with doctors. host: if you want to follow his reporting, you can go to