As Eastern Niagara Hospital prepares for shutdown, records fee explained

Ben Joe, Niagara Gazette, Niagara Falls, N.Y.
·2 min read

Apr. 23—Ahead of its planned closing this year, Eastern Niagara Hospital notified community members that medical records in its possession won't be stored, and past patients who want their records can obtain them for a fee.

This didn't sit well with Michael Diemert. A lifelong Lockport resident who remembers when ENH was Lockport Memorial Hospital, he had to wonder: "Why would I pay for my own records?"

In January, ENH notified past patients via mailer, as well as in a notice published multiple times in the Union-Sun & Journal, that copies of records going back to 2016 for adults, and pediatric records going back to 2001, can be obtained upon completion of an Authorization Release Form and payment of a fee for the copies.

The fee is $15 for documents on a flash USB drive or CD, or 75 cents per page if the patient wants paper copies. The fee reflects the costs of storage and labor.

However, nobody who requests their records will be denied, according to Patricia Brandt, ENH spokesperson.

"We're not going to turn people away because they can't pay," she said.

Patients who want their ENH patient medical records must get them by Nov. 30, after which the ENH Patient Portal will be disabled and most records will be destroyed, the hospital advised in its published notice. This week, Brandt advised people try to get their records by June 17, the hospital closing date. She added that the hospital's website is being updated with new instructions on how to request records.

Catholic Health, which will open the new Lockport Memorial Hospital, a campus of Mount St. Mary's Hospital, later this year, will have radiology records, Brandt said.

"A lot of the providers work for Catholic Health ... . They work for most of the different hospital systems (so) the radiology images are with Catholic Health already," she said.

Another way people can get their records is through HEALTHeLINK, the electronic clinical information exchange where various healthcare providers can access the records of a consenting patient. The service is free and can be accessed at https://wnyhealthelink.com/.

"All the Western New York providers participate in HEALTHeLINK so they can see any medical records of patient activity from the hospital, and patients can see their own as well on that website," Brandt said.