Your Medical Record

Federal Regulations and Requirements for Health Information

Avera works with its MyChart portal developer to implement updates guided by federal regulations, primarily issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

These regulations often focus on promoting interoperability between health systems, so you can coordinate care between health care facilities. They also aim to improve patient access to health information, restricting information blocking by a health system. This increased sharing of patient information:

• Helps you manage your patient information.
• Allows you and your provider to coordinate care more effectively.
• Improves health outcomes and reduces costs.

There are cases where restricting data is not considered blocking you from access:

• Protecting patient from harm
• Fulfilling legal privacy obligations
• IT upgrades
• Protecting security of health information
• Infeasible requests