By law, you have the right to correct errors you find in your medical records. Those corrections are referred to in the law as “amendments.” The records themselves are called a “designated record set.”

In particular, as medical records are transferred from paper to digital, there are any number of mistakes that are being made. Your review and correction is definitely warranted.

Once you have obtained, then reviewed your medical records and have found an error, you’ll want to follow this procedure:

1. Determine exactly what the error is and whether it needs correcting. Sometimes errors are simply typographical and may or may not require correction. However, any piece of information that will have an effect on your diagnosis, treatment, or ability to be contacted, whether it can affect you or your health today or in the future, should be corrected. Further, problems with medical identity theft are on the rise, so information that regards payment, billing or your personal identity should be corrected.

Here are some examples:

• If any medical test results, symptoms or treatment decisions are recorded incorrectly, they should be corrected immediately. Your care and future health could hinge on their accuracy.
• If your phone number is incorrect, you’ll want to make sure it gets corrected immediately. Failure to do so will result in the wrong information being replicated.
• If the record says your appointment was at 2 p.m., but you never saw the doctor until 3:30 p.m., that may not have any bearing on your future health or billing information needs.