Texas Border Business
Texas Medical Association
A new law effective Sept. 1 will protect Texas patients from the confusion of receiving difficult-to-decipher health information in their inbox with no explanation, thanks to the efforts of Texas physicians.
Instead, doctors will have time to review patients’ test results and call them to reveal the news – good or bad – and provide context.
The 2025 Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 922 by Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills) and Rep. Caroline Fairly (R-Amarillo). The law pauses the otherwise immediate release of sensitive medical test results such as cancer screenings, allowing physicians three days after the tests are finalized to review and communicate the news to patients before they are sent via electronic health records. It pertains to information such as a pathology or radiology report that “has a reasonable likelihood of showing a finding of malignancy” or a test result that may reveal a genetic marker.
“When Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 922 into law, he restored something we never thought we would need to fight for: the right for patients to receive life-changing medical results from their clinicians, and the right for physicians to deliver this information in a timely, informative, compassionate manner,” said Dallas oncologist David E. Gerber, MD, who worked for several years to improve the process of releasing sensitive health information to patients.
“It’s fantastic, I love it,” reacted Cindy Lenert, a Pottsboro, Texas cancer patient of Dr. Gerber’s for several years. “It’s just going to take a lot of anxiety away from the patient.”
Without this law, confusing information, including test results – and in the case of Ms. Lenert, cancer scans – hit patients’ inboxes and online patient portals immediately, often causing anxiety. That’s what happened to Ms. Lenert when she waited to learn whether her first treatments were arresting her cancer.
“I didn’t know what the heck I was reading, so I’m all upset, thinking, is this good? Is it bad?” She fretted an entire weekend awaiting her scheduled follow-up appointment with her doctor so he could explain whether her treatment was working.
Prior to the passage of this law, the information blocking provisions of the federal 21st Century Cures Act required immediate release of health information to patients’ information portals. As a result, since spring 2021 patients received confusing information before their physician could decode it and discuss next steps for treatment – if any were necessary.
“The pendulum just swung too fast, too far… from zero to 100,” Dr. Gerber said, resulting in “confused and potentially traumatized patients.”
He told harrowing stories in legislative testimony representing the Texas Medical Association (TMA) urging lawmakers to support the bill. He also described many typical conversations with patients, explaining their cancer-related test outcomes “in a timely, informative, and supportive manner.”
He said, “It is always a confusing and scary time for them, as the results can be life changing.”
But patients’ confusion was compounded when they suddenly received test results electronically – results Ms. Lenert described as “gibberish.”
Dr. Gerber told lawmakers, “I have had patients learn that they have cancer from a smartphone notification in the middle of a business dinner, while reading a bedtime story to a 3-year-old child, and during a rush-hour commute.”
Efficient, quick release of health information to patients is beneficial, Dr. Gerber says. However, he estimates as many as three in four patients received pathology test results even before the physician who ordered the test saw them. He understands it is human nature for someone anxious to hear news of their health to click on a message as soon as possible, even before they can visit their doctor for an explanation.
“Although this bill places a brief pause on the electronic transfer of some test results to a patient, it allows for a physician to call a patient with the results at any time,” he said. “Giving the right information, rather than just the fastest information.”
For Ms. Lenert, the conversation with her trusted physician was a good one. “He told me it was good news,” she said. “It had not spread, didn’t look like it was growing at all. He made me feel really good.”
TMA is the largest state medical society in the nation, representing more than 59,000 physician and medical student members. It is located in Austin and has 110 component county medical societies around the state. TMA’s key objective since 1853 is to improve the health of all Texans.
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