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Information blocking can result in significant financial penalties for hospitals, providers, and accountable care organizations, making compliance an important responsibility for all team members. To support compliance with the federal Information Blocking rule, Health Information Management (HIM) and Compliance continue to strengthen processes around the release of patient information through MyChart.

Over the past several months, HIM and Compliance have worked with team members and managers to provide guidance and address potential inappropriate use of the release restriction functionality in Epic, which prevents notes from being viewable in MyChart. Those efforts have led to a significant decrease in note-blocking activity and continued engagement will help us stay the course.

Key Reminders

• Patients generally have a right to timely access their electronic health information through MyChart.
• A note may only be manually restricted from releasing to MyChart in two situations:
  • When a licensed clinical health care professional with a clinician-patient relationship determines releasing the information is reasonably likely to endanger the life or physical safety of the patient or another person. This exception is intended for rare situations involving a risk of physical harm. When the exception applies, the licensed clinical health care professional may place a manual hold on the note or other information.
• When the patient requests the restriction.
• Any manual restriction must be removed once the reason for the hold no longer applies.
• Alternative Epic tools, such as Sticky Notes, In Basket messages, SecureChat, or documentation workflows designed for specific use cases, may be more appropriate for situations where team members need to communicate with one another.
• Remember that restricting a note from MyChart does not prevent a patient from obtaining the information through HIM.

Team members and leaders are encouraged to review the full Information Blocking and MyChart FAQs for detailed guidance, including:

• When notes can and cannot be restricted from release to MyChart.
• Requests to permanently restrict patient access to records.
• Documentation best practices.
• Use of Sensitive Notes, Psychotherapy Notes, and other Epic tools.
• Tips for common scenarios and workflows.
• Please review the full FAQ document and contact HIM or Compliance with questions.