Public Act 93-0492
SB1414 Enrolled LRB093 03379 AMC 09887 b
AN ACT to amend the Hospital Licensing Act.
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly:
Section 5. The Hospital Licensing Act is amended by
changing Section 6.17 as follows:
(210 ILCS 85/6.17)
Sec. 6.17. Protection of and confidential access to
medical records and information.
(a) Every hospital licensed under this Act shall develop
a medical record for each of its patients as required by the
Department by rule.
(b) All information regarding a hospital patient
gathered by the hospital's medical staff and its agents and
employees shall be the property and responsibility of the
hospital and must be protected from inappropriate disclosure
as provided in this Section.
(c) Every hospital shall preserve its medical records in
a format and for a duration established by hospital policy
and for not less than 10 years, provided that if the hospital
has been notified in writing by an attorney before the
expiration of the 10 year retention period that there is
litigation pending in court involving the record of a
particular patient as possible evidence and that the patient
is his client or is the person who has instituted such
litigation against his client, then the hospital shall retain
the record of that patient until notified in writing by the
plaintiff's attorney, with the approval of the defendant's
attorney of record, that the case in court involving such
record has been concluded or for a period of 12 years from
the date that the record was produced, whichever occurs first
in time.
(d) No member of a hospital's medical staff and no agent
or employee of a hospital shall disclose the nature or
details of services provided to patients, except that the
information may be disclosed to the patient, persons
authorized by the patient, the party making treatment
decisions, if the patient is incapable of making decisions
regarding the health services provided, those parties
directly involved with providing treatment to the patient or
processing the payment for that treatment, those parties
responsible for peer review, utilization review or, quality
assurance, risk management, or defense of claims brought
against the hospital arising out of the care, and those
parties required to be notified under the Abused and
Neglected Child Reporting Act, the Illinois Sexually
Transmissible Disease Control Act, or where otherwise
authorized or required by law.
(e) The hospital's medical staff members and the
hospital's agents and employees may communicate, at any time
and in any fashion, with legal counsel for the hospital
concerning the patient medical record privacy and retention
requirements of this Section and any care or treatment they
provided or assisted in providing to any patient within the
scope of their employment or affiliation with the hospital.
(e-5) Notwithstanding subsections (d) and (e), for
actions filed on or after January 1, 2004, after a complaint
for healing art malpractice is served upon the hospital or
upon its agents or employees, members of the hospital's
medical staff who are not actual or alleged agents,
employees, or apparent agents of the hospital may not
communicate with legal counsel for the hospital or with risk
management of the hospital concerning the claim alleged in
the complaint for healing art malpractice against the
hospital except with the patient's consent or in discovery
authorized by the Code of Civil Procedure or the Supreme
Court rules. For the purposes of this subsection (e-5),
"hospital" includes a hospital affiliate as defined in
subsection (b) of Section 10.8 of this Act.
(f) Each hospital licensed under this Act shall provide
its federally designated organ procurement agency and any
tissue bank with which it has an agreement with access to the
medical records of deceased patients for the following
purposes:
(1) estimating the hospital's organ and tissue
donation potential;
(2) identifying the educational needs of the
hospital with respect to organ and tissue donation; and
(3) identifying the number of organ and tissue
donations and referrals to potential organ and tissue
donors.
(g) All hospital and patient information, interviews,
reports, statements, memoranda, and other data obtained or
created by a tissue bank or federally designated organ
procurement agency from the medical records review described
in subsection (f) shall be privileged, strictly confidential,
and used only for the purposes put forth in subsection (f) of
this Section and shall not be admissible as evidence nor
discoverable in an action of any kind in court or before a
tribunal, board, agency, or person.
(h) Any person who, in good faith, acts in accordance
with the terms of this Section shall not be subject to any
type of civil or criminal liability or discipline for
unprofessional conduct for those actions under any
professional licensing statute.
(i) Any individual who wilfully or wantonly discloses
hospital or medical record information in violation of this
Section is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor. As used in this
subsection, "wilfully or wantonly" means a course of action
that shows an actual or deliberate intention to cause harm or
that, if not intentional, shows an utter indifference to or
conscious disregard for the safety of others or their
property.
(j) The changes to this Section made by this amendatory
Act of the 93rd General Assembly apply to any action filed on
or after January 1, 2004.
(Source: P.A. 91-526, eff. 1-1-00.)
Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect on
January 1, 2004.