Long Distance
Records
REQUESTING AND
MANAGING THE RECORDS
OF FOREIGN NATIONALS
By Barry S. Herrin, JD, CHPS, FACHE
THERE HAVE BEEN many articles written
about the increase in “medical tourism”
and the practice of US citizens traveling
to other countries for organ transplants
and other procedures, often at costs vastly lower than those likely to be incurred
in the United States. However, there are a
significant number of foreign nationals traveling to the United States to receive medical
treatment, particularly if a country’s national
health service has long waiting lists and the
potential patients have sufficient funds to pay
for the costs of care.
In remarks in December 2011 at the Uni-
versity of Texas at Arlington, Deepak
Datta, CEO of Medical Tourism
Corporation, told students in
the executive MBA program
that, notwithstanding the
number of Americans that go
overseas for medical treatment, the
United States “probably benefits the
most from the medical tourism indus-
try, as thousands of patients from differ-
ent parts of the world visit leading Ameri-
can hospitals.”
According to Datta, “most of these patients
are either wealthy individuals or sponsored by
their home governments.” 1 In one highly publicized case in
2010, the premier of the Canadian province of Newfoundland
flew to Miami to have heart surgery. 2
With such patients come health information issues related
to the treatment of foreign nationals in the United States—
how US providers can obtain health information on foreign
patients, the treatment of that information as a part of the US
provider’s official patient record, and any restrictions on the further use or disclosure of that information due to US or foreign
privacy rules.
