10 Year Analysis Complete for House Bill 1496

You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the Initiative 960 email list. RCW 43.135.031 (I-960) requires that notices be sent each time a bill that raises taxes or fees is: introduced in either house; scheduled for a public hearing; approved by any legislative committee; or passed by either house of the Legislature.

Please note: This email message was sent from a notification-only address. Please do not reply to this message.

UPDATE: The 10 year analysis for HB 1496, titled AN ACT Relating to strengthening patients' rights regarding their health care information by promoting access to information and providing enforcement protections for the appropriate use of the information, has been completed. The Office of Financial Management has identified this bill as requiring a ten-year projection of increased cost to the taxpayers or affected fee payers.

Ten-year projection:

University of Washington:

Due to the provisions contained in Section 1, HB 1496 will have an indeterminate negative cash receipts impact on UW Medicine. However, the fiscal impact is likely to exceed $50,000 per fiscal year. 

UW Medicine currently only charges for medical records in limited instances, including if the request comes from an attorney or insurance provider. UW Medicine does not charge for medical records if the request comes directly from a patient or other providers caring for the patient. UW Medicine also sets caps on the total allowable charges for individual records requests. The maximum charges a request could incur do not exceed $137 before applicable taxes. 

Under Section 1(2)(a) of SB 5254, UW Medicine will only be able to charge a $50 fee for records requests made by an attorney representing a patient. Over the last five months, UW Medicine has received approximately 1,910 records requests related to legal services. The average cost to provide these records was $105.14. Therefore, there is an anticipated loss of revenue of approximately $55.14 per request, which would total $252,780 per FY.

Meanwhile, records requests related to insurance numbered approximately 879 over the past five months, with an average cost of $83.93. Given the bill language directs DOH to adopt rules around a reasonable fee, the fiscal impacts for this section are currently indeterminate. However, given the bill language specifies the standards must be based upon the actual costs of searching and producing the particular patient's records, UW Medicine assumes the standards adopted may require tracking and setting a fee schedule for the time required for each individual request, which may not be feasible to implement. Therefore, this could result in a fiscal impact of between $0-$177,059 per FY.

For this reason, the overall impact of HB 1496 is assessed as indeterminate, but significantly over $50,000 per year.

Ten-year projection prepared in consultation with the following agencies:

University of Washington


Bill sponsors and contact information:

Representative Liz Berry, Prime Sponsor
Democrat
(360) 786-7860
Liz.Berry@leg.wa.gov

Representative Dan Bronoske
Democrat
(360) 786-7958
Dan.Bronoske@leg.wa.gov

Representative Peter Abbarno
Republican
(360) 786-7896
Peter.Abbarno@leg.wa.gov

Representative Debra Lekanoff
Democrat
(360) 786-7800
debra.lekanoff@leg.wa.gov

Representative Beth Doglio
Democrat
(360) 786-7940
beth.doglio@leg.wa.gov

Representative Strom Peterson
Democrat
(360) 786-7950
strom.peterson@leg.wa.gov

Representative Julia Reed
Democrat
(360) 786-7814
Julia.Reed@leg.wa.gov

Representative Dan Griffey
Republican
(360) 786-7966
dan.griffey@leg.wa.gov

Representative Tarra Simmons
Democrat
(360) 786-7934
Tarra.Simmons@leg.wa.gov

Representative Roger Goodman
Democrat
(360) 786-7878
roger.goodman@leg.wa.gov

Representative Lisa Parshley
Democrat
(360) 786-7992
Lisa.Parshley@leg.wa.gov

Representative Timm Ormsby
Democrat
(360) 786-7946
timm.ormsby@leg.wa.gov

Representative Mary Fosse
Democrat
(360) 786-7864
Mary.Fosse@leg.wa.gov

Representative Gerry Pollet
Democrat
(360) 786-7886
gerry.pollet@leg.wa.gov

Representative Natasha Hill
Democrat
(360) 786-7888
Natasha.Hill@leg.wa.gov

Representative Osman Salahuddin
Democrat
(360) 786-7936
Osman.Salahuddin@leg.wa.gov

Representative Shaun Scott
Democrat
(360) 786-7920
Shaun.Scott@leg.wa.gov




Legislative Bill Information Website: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/

Initiative 960 Website: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/tax/default.asp