Medical Records

manofomega

i work for an employer in one state but also has employees working in other states in the offices of an entirely different employer. when these employees need medical attention, they receive it from the health services dept. of the other employer. the question is - - -who do the medical records belong to? and how does our medical staff get access to the medical records?

mwild31

Why do you need their medical records?

manofomega

easy, for ADA, FMLA, etc.

Pork

Most likely, the Health Services of the Other Employer; unless, your employee has medical records pertaining to an accident/injury for which your company is responsible. I would assume, that your organization provides out-sourced labor in a very specialized area of concern to a company with an inhouse medical department authorized to treat people. If it is medical of a personal nature, I would leave it alone, if you have a need for purposes of FMLA or pay records in the recording of sick time or something like that you could get your employee to sign a release authorization and seek a copy for your filings. But like the previous posting "why would you want medical records"? I don't want them now for my current employees, it puts us at risk for privacy issues that we need to avoid! PORK

manofomega

the records are needed so that our medical director can make a determination if there is an impairment for ADA purposes, short term disability, to dtermine if an accommodation request is reasonable, etc.

Pork

ADA PURPOSES, reasonable accomodations, short-term disability;;;All I need to know is that someone is missing work and if in the hospital, I travel to their bedside and respectfully, provide them with a copy of the FMLA & MEDICAL PLAN POLICYs, I collect a signature and tell the employee what to do with the application and physician's certification form. Wtih the exception to what the physician decides to write on his certification we do not need medical records and we treat the information with our strongest level of "close-hold" security of personal MEDICAL information in the FMLA file which is always seperate of the personnel record jacket. We do not need medical records for our determination of FMLA, all we need is the application and physician's certification. As far as ADA, you should not go there until the employee has raised the question of accomodation. To treat an employee as disabled you have cemented their disability. I am a diabetic, which has not hindered my abilities to do my position, I do not need any accomodation. If the company treated me as an american with a disability then I are one, JUST THE FACT,S!!!

PORK

mwild31

Pork - you are so good! Great response and it's exactly how we do it around here as well. x:-)