Kansas House Bill HB2683

Kansas 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 2/4/26
• Refer: 2/4/26

Caption

Allowing healthcare providers to charge fees to furnish a patient's healthcare records and providing for the disclosure of a deceased patient's healthcare records to certain individuals.

Summary

HB 2683 revises Kansas law governing access to healthcare records. The bill keeps the existing framework requiring providers to furnish records to a patient, an authorized representative, or another person legally entitled to the records, but it adds a more detailed fee schedule for producing records, including electronic delivery when records are stored electronically and the provider can supply them in that format. It also allows providers to charge specified cost-based fees for paper copies, storage retrieval, postage, and certification or notarization, and it sets annual inflation adjustments for those fees beginning in 2027. The bill also expands and clarifies who may receive a deceased patient’s healthcare or payment records. It authorizes release to an executor or administrator, or under a valid healthcare power of attorney that expressly allows post-death disclosure. If no such representative exists, the bill creates a priority list of family members and other persons who may request the records by affidavit, including a surviving spouse, adult child, parent, adult sibling, guardian or conservator, trustee, or guardian ad litem for a minor child, so long as the decedent did not object and the request is not inconsistent with known preferences of the deceased.

Impact

HB 2683 would amend K.S.A. 65-6836 and repeal the existing version of that statute, replacing it with a more detailed record-disclosure and fee structure for healthcare providers licensed by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts. It would affect patients, authorized representatives, estates, family members of deceased patients, and providers that maintain medical records, especially those using electronic health records. The bill also preserves the board’s authority to adopt rules and discipline licensees for noncompliance, while adding a severability clause and tying fee updates to inflation.

Sentiment

The bill appears generally supportive of broader access to records and clearer rules for providers, patients, and families, with no recorded committee testimony or vote history in the materials provided. Its sponsorship request by the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association suggests interest in improving access and enforceability of record requests. Overall, the measure reads as a technical but substantive update to record-release procedures rather than a highly partisan proposal.

Contention

The main points of potential contention are the new fee structure and the expanded authority to release a decedent’s records to relatives or other personal representatives. Providers may view the bill as imposing detailed pricing limits and administrative requirements, while patient advocates or family members may support the clearer access rules. The bill also preserves a provider’s ability to withhold records if disclosure would cause substantial harm, which may be a point of dispute in individual cases. Because no committee debate or votes are included, there is no direct evidence of specific opposition in the available record.