The proposalrequires manufacturers to fashion software that can readily exporta patient's entire medical record — and mandates that health caresystems provide these records to the patient. (Photo:Shutterstock)

The chairman of the Senate health committee on Tuesday backednew federal regulations to remove roadblocks patients can face inobtaining copies of their electronic medical records.

“These proposed rules remove barriers and should make it easierfor patients to more quickly access, use and understand theirpersonal medical information,” Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairmanof the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, said in a statement prepared for a hearing onthe rules that kicks off Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Related: Google's foray into health records raises privacyconcerns

The rules, proposed last month by the Department of Health andHuman Services, take aim at so-called information blocking, inwhich tech companies or health systems limit the sharing ortransfer of information from medical files.

Alexander said HHS believes the new rules should give more than125 million patients easier access to their own records in anelectronic format.

“This will be a huge relief to any of us who have spent hourstracking down paper copies of our records and carting them back andforth to different doctors' offices. The rules will reduce theadministrative burden on doctors so they can spend more time withpatients,” Alexander said.

The proposal requires manufacturers to fashion software that canreadily export a patient's entire medical record — and mandatesthat health care systems provide these records electronically at nocost to the patient.

Congress jump-started the nation's switch from paper toelectronic health records in 2009 using billions of dollars infinancial stimulus funding to help doctors and hospital purchasethe equipment. Officials expected the shift to cut down on medicalerrors, reduce unnecessary medical testing and other waste and giveAmericans a bigger role in managing their health care.

Yet in the decade since the rollout, critics have argued thatthe government spent billions financing software that can causesome new types of errors and typically cannot share informationacross health networks as intended.

“BotchedOperation,” a recent investigationpublished by KHN and Fortune, found that the federal government hasspent more than $36 billion on the initiative. During that time,thousands of reports of deaths, injuries and near misses linked todigital systems have piled up in databases — while many patientshave reported difficulties getting copies of their completeelectronic files.

Jonathan Lomurro, a medical malpractice attorney in New Jersey,said his clients usually have to go to court to get their completemedical record. The information that health care providers fightmost bitterly to keep from them, he said, are the audit logs — orthe data that show every time a record has been accessed or edited,and by whom and when.

That “metadata,” he and other plaintiff attorneys argue, iscritical for patients to understand the history of their care,particularly in cases where something has gone wrong.

In an interview prior to Tuesday's hearing, Lomurro criticizedthe HHS proposal, saying it limits a patient's ability to obtainthese logs. While the proposed rule requires the systems to sharemost data from a medical record with a patient, it excludes audittrails from that classification.

“While the proposal talks about the need of patient access …they then strip the greatest protections from the patient,” saidLomurro. “I am at a loss on how this could ever be a beneficialchange to the rules and help patients.”

Seema Verma, who heads the Centers for Medicare & MedicaidServices, agreed that patients should be entitled to audit loginformation. “At the end of the day, it's all of the patient'sdata. If it affects and touches their medical record, then thatbelongs to them,” Verma said in an interview last month.

The HHS proposal also encourages doctors and other users of EHRtechnology to share information about software problems theyencounter by prohibiting “gag clauses” in sales contracts. Criticshave long argued that the clauses have prevented users from freelydiscussing flaws, including software glitches and other breakdownsthat could result in medical errors and patient injuries. In 2012,an Institute of Medicine report blamed the confidentiality clausesfor impeding efforts to improve the safety of health informationtechnology.

But a major remaining problem in wiring up medicine is the lackof interoperability across rival data systems, said ChristopherRehm, chief medical informatics officer of LifePoint Health, ahospital system in Brentwood, Tenn. In testimony prepared for theTuesday hearing, Rehm called it “the equivalent of telling peoplethey must buy cars and move those cars from place to place, butthere are no roads and no agreed-upon design for the roads, letalone the funding to actually pay for the construction.”

According to Rehm, the average-sized community hospital (161beds) spends nearly $760,000 a year on information technologyinvestments needed to meet federal regulations. He said the costs“are crushing our industry where margins are already thin.”

Kaiser Health News isa nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is aneditorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation,which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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