Patient Rights & Protections

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act sets national standards for how your health information is stored, shared, and protected. It gives you the right to know who has accessed your records and to request corrections to inaccurate entries.

• — Providers must safeguard your records against unauthorized access.
• — You can request a copy of your medical records in most cases.
• — Your information generally cannot be shared without authorization outside of treatment, payment, and operations.

The Affordable Care Act establishes baseline consumer protections in health coverage, including rules around pre-existing conditions and essential health benefit categories.

• — Plans generally cannot deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
• — Many preventive services are covered without additional cost-sharing.
• — Annual and lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits are generally prohibited.

This federal law limits unexpected out-of-network bills in many emergency and certain non-emergency situations, and requires good-faith cost estimates for the uninsured or self-pay patients.

• — Emergency care is generally billed at in-network cost-sharing levels.
• — Uninsured patients can request a good-faith estimate before scheduled care.
• — A dispute process exists for bills that appear to violate these protections.

Hospital price transparency rules require many facilities to publish standard charges, and patients generally have a right to request an itemized bill before payment.

• — Many hospitals must publish machine-readable pricing files.
• — You can request an itemized statement to review before paying.
• — Billing disputes can often be raised with your insurer's appeals process.