Aida Cerundolo

Aida Cerundolo, M.D. SUPPORT HB 1378 I am a board-certified emergency medicine physician with over twenty years of experience treating children and adults, and I SUPPORT HB 1378. First and foremost, under the HIPAA privacy rule, covered entities cannot limit a parent’s access to their minor child’s medical records beyond any existing limitations in applicable law.* Therefore, healthcare systems limiting parental access to minor children’s electronic medical records – limitations that are not specifically permitted under existing New Hampshire law – are committing civil rights violations. This is because parents have a vested interest in the health and well-being of their children. There are few decisions as impactful to a minor child’s welfare as medical decisions. It is in a child’s best interest to require parental consent for nonemergent medical and surgical treatments. Furthermore, parents need access to their children’s medical records in order to provide true informed consent. New Hampshire law recognizes that minors are different from adults. For example, minors are considered to lack capacity to enter into legal contracts. The law recognizes that in matters involving contractual obligations, children do not have the maturity to navigate complex decisions. This makes sense because the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that determines personality and executive function, is underdeveloped until the mid-twenties, limiting a child’s ability to make informed decisions. It is therefore impossible to assume that children can universally provide informed consent for decisions that impact their own health. Additionally, minors cannot consent to the transfer of their own records. Parents shielded from their children’s medical records are expected to give consent for record transfer without access to the records themselves, or possibly even understanding why the transfer is necessary. Finally, parental access to children’s medical records is protective against medical error. A Johns Hopkins study suggests that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.* On multiple occasions my patients and their family members have corrected mistakes within a medical record, and I have had to correct errors in my own record. The potential for error increases without a parent’s oversight to confirm accuracy. Please help parents support their children’s health and well-being by supporting HB 1378. * https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ocr-letter-hipaa-privacy-rule-and-parental-access-to-minor-childrens-medical-records.pdf *Makary MA, Daniel M. Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US. BMJ. 2016 May 3;353:i2139. doi: 10.1136/bmj.i2139. PMID: 27143499.