Selling of patients records help

[LENNY]

We are closing a retail optical store with employed OD. A private store in the same mall wants to buy our patients records. (Name, address, phone and maybe exam charts)

Are there any complications for both sides on this sale from the HIPPA point of view?
Did anybody recently made this transaction?

[pknsbeans]

Since you haven't received a reply yet, I did a search and the best I could find is this:

Remaining HIPAA complaint when transferring patient information

In the purchase and sale of a medical practice, the question arises of how to transfer certain patient information, or protected health information (PHI), from the seller to the buyer without violating the HIPAA Privacy Rule. A seller is permitted to share PHI with a buyer pursuant to a business associate agreement because the buyer, as a business associate, will use the PHI for “health care operations”, a permitted use under HIPAA. “Health care operations” include business management and general administrative operations of the entity, including the sale, transfer, merger or consolidation of all or part of the covered entity with another covered entity.
The American Medical Association provides further guidance for the transfer of patient records upon the sale of a medical practice. Ethical Opinion 7.04 states, “The transfer of records of patients is subject, however, to the following: (1) All active patients should be notified that the physician (or the estate) is transferring the practice to another physician who will retain custody of their records and that at their written request, within a reasonable time specified in the notice, the records or copies will be sent to any other physician of their choice… (2) A reasonable charge may be made for the cost of duplicating records.”

Granted, it is an "ethical opinion" that you notify the patients, but it would most likely be your buyer that would be contacting the active patients to inform them they are in possession of their record(s). My interpretation of HIPAA compliance in relation to selling your patients' charts is the buyer must be using it for medical information and the patient should be notified.

[Tallboy]

I mean part of HIPPA is being a custodian of the records, so really you are following HIPPA by having someone else become the custodian of the records, just send out a notice to all the patients advising them of who will be holding their records (as well as a blurb about how long records are kept via HIPPA policies etc.) After that its up to those patients to either use that practice for their optical needs or not, but at least they will know how to get their records.

I would have a lawyer draw up a contract of sale (or maybe someone on here has one they have used.)

[LENNY]

I doubt it is that simple....
I heard that lots of practices can not be sold because of this problem.....

[Tallboy]

I doubt it is that simple....
I heard that lots of practices can not be sold because of this problem.....

I wonder if regulations on this are federal only or if local jurisdictions are involved? If you can't transfer custodianship through sale what do doctors do when they retire? They still would be required by law to make available those records to their patients for 7 years right? This is all stuff I've never thought about.

[LENNY]

I wonder if regulations on this are federal only or if local jurisdictions are involved? If you can't transfer custodianship through sale what do doctors do when they retire? They still would be required by law to make available those records to their patients for 7 years right? This is all stuff I've never thought about.

Thats one of the problems!

[pknsbeans]

Hmm. I've heard of charts being a hangup in negotiation, but only because the selling practitioner over values them.