Patients' medical records: whose business is it anyway?

Physicians receive many requests for medical records information: Attorneys request medical records information for court cases; colleagues request information which may assist with consultations or in the medical care of individual patients; insurers request information with respect to necessity or appropriateness of care. However, none of these scenarios prompt as many telephone calls for advice to the Office of General Counsel at State Society headquarters as does the call or letter from a patient requesting a copy of his or her medical record.