Release of information (ROI) software is truly impactful for HIM directors because it gives visibility into every request from intake to delivery.
Every day, your team juggles patient requests, payer audits, legal subpoenas, and continuity-of-care disclosures. When workflows depend on fax machines, shared inboxes, and spreadsheets, even a strong team can feel like a system held together by muscle and memory.
Regulators are watching those same workflows. Recent HHS OCR enforcement highlights show more than 31,000 HIPAA cases resolved and hundreds of resolution agreements that force changes in day-to-day practice, not just fines.
At the same time, the workforce is stretched. A 2023 AHIMA workforce survey found that 66 percent of health information professionals reported staffing shortages, most with unfilled positions.
ChartRequest lives inside that reality every day. Across a national provider network, we see how modern release of information (ROI) software changes the daily experience for HIM teams.
This article uses that vantage point to give you a practical guide to ROI software: what it is, where manual processes break down, how dedicated tools streamline each step, and what to evaluate when you are ready to modernize your process.
What Is ROI Software?
Release of information (ROI) software helps HIM teams manage the full lifecycle of medical records requests. Instead of scattering work across fax queues, portals, email, and spreadsheets, ROI software centralizes intake, routing, fulfillment, and reporting.
Modern ROI software typically supports:
- A single digital intake system for patients, payers, law firms, and other requestors
- Structured workflows for different request types
- Role-based work queues for HIM and medical records staff
- Integrated quality checks, fee calculations, and invoicing
- Secure delivery and automatic audit trails
- Dashboards for turnaround time, workload, and exceptions
Release of information (ROI) software provides a defined, repeatable path for every request, from intake to release. It does not replace policy or judgment. It gives your team a shared system that carries routine work, enforces rules, and documents what happened.
What Challenges Does Your Practice Face Without ROI Software?
When release of information runs on fax machines, shared inboxes, and ad hoc spreadsheets, every request depends on individual memory and effort. That creates predictable problems.
How Does Fax-Dependent Communication Increase Error Risk?
Despite years of investment in EHRs and interoperability, fax is still deeply embedded in healthcare communication and ROI workflows. In one MGMA Stat poll, 89 percent of medical practices reported at least one fax machine in use.
Fax introduces several risks:
- Illegible or incomplete requests
- Misdialed numbers and misdirected PHI
- No built-in confirmation that the right recipient actually received the records
These are rarely intentional violations, but rather foreseeable failures of a legacy channel.
How Does Manual Tracking Limit Visibility?
Many HIM teams still track requests with paper logs, email folders, or basic ticketing tools. Each location or business unit may use a slightly different spreadsheet or shared inbox.
That approach makes it hard to answer basic questions:
- How many requests are in progress, by type and site?
- Which requests are approaching the 30-day deadline?
- Where do errors, complaints, or escalations cluster?
When leaders cannot see the whole picture, they rely on anecdotes instead of data. That sets HIM directors back with regulators, executives, and requestors.
Why Are Spreadsheets a Risky System?
Spreadsheets creep in because they feel fast and flexible. A manager adds a few columns for request dates, sites, and requestor types. Over time, people add new fields, filters, and tabs to answer each new question.
The result is a fragile “system” that:
- Breaks when someone sorts or filters the sheet incorrectly
- Depends on manual data entry and updates
- Offers no real-time status for patients, payers, or partner providers
Spreadsheets are helpful for analysis, but they are not a safe long-term home for PHI or a reliable source of record for audits.
How Does Human Risk Show Up in Manual Workflows?
ROI is a human process at its core. Staff members interpret requests, check authorizations, select documents, and decide what to disclose. Human judgment is essential, but it is also where many HIPAA incidents start.
On the unintentional side, simple mistakes can lead to significant consequences. A mis-typed address, an extra document attached to the fax, or a request that never makes it from the inbox to the work queue can all become reportable privacy incidents.
In one widely reported case, EmblemHealth mailed benefit summaries to members with their Health Insurance Claim Numbers visible on the envelope and later paid a significant settlement.
Malicious insider activity is the other side of the human risk spectrum. When access is broad and logs are limited, it can take months to detect snooping or theft. Montefiore Medical Center agreed to a multi-million-dollar settlement after an employee stole patient information over several years for identity theft schemes.
Understaffing raises that risk. AHIMA has documented how shortages in health information staffing correlate with increased privacy errors and even patient safety concerns in an analysis of understaffed and overworked HIM teams.
How Does ROI Software Streamline Medical Records Requests?
Think about the typical phases of a request: intake, validation, retrieval, quality review, delivery, and closing the loop. ROI software gives each phase a defined, auditable workflow.
1. How Does ROI Software Improve Intake and Classification?
Instead of accepting requests in any format or channel, ROI software provides a structured intake process. Patients, payers, attorneys, and other requestors can submit requests through branded forms or portals that capture:
- Requestor identity and relationship to the patient
- Legal basis for the request (Right of Access, authorization, subpoena, court order, etc.)
- Scope, dates, and types of records requested
- Preferred delivery method and contact details
On your side, ROI software classifies requests by type, urgency, and site. That classification feeds work queues, service-level targets, and reporting.
2. How Does ROI Software Support Authorization and Policy Checks?
Authorization is one of the most nuanced steps in ROI. Staff must comply with HIPAA, state laws, organizational policies, and special rules for sensitive records.
ROI software supports this work by:
- Presenting the right intake questions for each request type
- Making authorization documents easy to review and compare to the policy
- Requiring documentation when staff use exceptions or deny requests
The goal is not to replace your judgment. The goal is to ensure that similar scenarios lead to similar decisions, and that those decisions are fully documented.
3. How Does ROI Software Improve Retrieval and Assembly?
Once a request is approved, the work shifts to finding and assembling the right records. In many organizations, that still means jumping between EHR screens, imaging systems, billing platforms, and legacy archives.
ROI software reduces that friction by:
- Integrating with your core systems where possible
- Standardizing how staff document which sources they checked
- Making it easy to attach or ingest records in multiple formats
- Allowing partial releases when some data must be withheld
This structured approach not only speeds up processing. It also shows auditors that you have a repeatable method for identifying records in the designated record set.
4. How Does ROI Software Enhance Quality Review and Validation?
Every HIM director has stories of records released with the wrong patient, the wrong date range, or the wrong attachments. Those errors are harder to catch when work is scattered across inboxes and file shares.
ROI software adds a layer of quality control by:
- Supporting dual review or spot checks for high-risk request types
- Making it easy to compare records sent to the scope requested
- Requiring confirmation that sensitive elements have been handled correctly
- Logging who reviewed what, when, and what changes they made
That QA evidence matters when you need to show how your team prevents and detects errors.
5. How Does ROI Software Improve Delivery, Fees, and Documentation?
Delivery is where patient experience and compliance meet. Patients and requestors want fast, simple access. HIPAA and state law impose deadlines, fee limits, and security expectations.
ROI software simplifies this balancing act by:
- Offering secure portals, encrypted email options, and other delivery channels
- Tying each release to a specific request and authorization in the system of record
- Automating fee calculations based on HIPAA and applicable state limits
- Capturing acknowledgments and proof of receipt where appropriate
HHS’s Right of Access guidance expects you to meet 30-day timelines in most cases and to document extensions properly. ROI software helps your team show that you met those standards or, when you could not, why.
6. How Does ROI Software Help You Close the Loop and Report on ROI?
Once the immediate work is done, ROI software gives you something manual processes rarely provide: data.
Strong platforms let you:
- Track turnaround times by request type, site, and requestor
- See where extensions, denials, and resubmissions cluster
- Monitor workloads by queue and role
- Identify patterns in privacy incidents or near misses
Those insights help you refine policy, adjust staffing, and justify investments. They also give compliance teams a clear view of where risk concentrates.
How Does ROI Software Support Information Blocking Compliance and Audit Readiness?
HIPAA is not the only regulatory lens that applies to ROI workflows. The information blocking framework under the 21st Century Cures Act expects providers, health IT developers, and networks to avoid practices that unreasonably interfere with the access, exchange, or use of electronic health information.
Enforcement for certain actors now includes civil monetary penalties that the HHS Office of Inspector General can impose, as outlined in its information blocking enforcement overview.
ROI software supports information sharing obligations in a few important ways:
- Transparency into timelines. When every request and status lives in one system, you can see whether delays come from missing signatures, identity verification, complex record retrieval, or internal bottlenecks. That visibility makes it easier to evaluate whether a pattern could be seen as information blocking.
- Standard reasons and documentation. When you deny or limit access, ROI software can require staff to select a reason that maps to policy and to capture a free-text explanation. That evidence helps your legal and compliance teams evaluate whether an information blocking exception might apply.
- Consistent escalation paths. Structured workflows make it easier to route high-risk or borderline scenarios to compliance for real-time review rather than leaving tough calls in inboxes.
Audit readiness is the other major benefit. Regulators and plan auditors expect you to show what you did, not just what your policy says. AHIMA’s practice guidance on management practices for release of information and its article on focusing internal audit activities both emphasize the need for traceable workflows and evidence.
ROI software supports that expectation by:
- Creating a time-stamped record for each request, authorization, decision, and release
- Making it easy to pull audit reports by patient, site, requestor, or date range
- Linking privacy incidents and corrections to the underlying request history
When an auditor asks how you handle a specific type of request, you can show the actual workflow and the data, not just a written policy.
How Does ROI Software Support Interoperability and Digital Health Workflows?
Interoperability efforts often focus on clinical data exchange through EHRs, HIEs, and APIs. Yet many records still move through ROI channels, especially when outside organizations do not share your EHR or when data spans multiple systems.
The Office of the National Coordinator’s 2023 data brief on interoperable exchange among U.S. hospitals shows strong progress in hospitals that can send, receive, find, and integrate patient data electronically.
At the same time, reporting during COVID-19 highlighted gaps in how information flows to public health and other partners, as covered in this Healthcare Dive analysis of ONC and CDC reporting challenges.
ROI software helps bridge the worlds of interoperable exchange and day-to-day requests:
- It gives you a single hub for records that flow in and out through non-EHR channels.
- It aligns digital health workflows with your interoperability roadmap, rather than treating ROI as an exception.
- It makes it easier to monitor and improve how records flow to external clinicians, payers, and public agencies.
If you want to see how ROI software fits into a broader interoperability strategy, ChartRequest’s leadership guide on interoperability benefits and the HIPAA-focused overview of medical records exchange can provide additional context.
What Should You Look for in ROI Software?
Once you decide to move beyond spreadsheets and basic EHR modules, the next question is how to evaluate ROI software vendors. At a minimum, look for:
- End-to-end ROI workflows. The platform should support patient, payer, legal, and continuity-of-care requests with clear paths from intake to delivery.
- Configurable rules and templates. You need control over request types, routing, denial reasons, and correspondence language to match your policies.
- Strong security and compliance posture. Encryption, role-based access, detailed audit logs, and current certifications are table stakes. Your vendor should sign a business associate agreement and be able to explain how their controls support HIPAA compliance.
- Dashboards and reporting. You should be able to see turnaround time, extension rates, denials, workload, and incident patterns without building ad hoc reports from scratch.
- Staff experience. The interface should reduce clicks, clarify ownership, and support training rather than adding complexity.
You can also think in terms of your broader digital health workflow strategy. ROI software should align with the HIPAA ROI compliance fundamentals so that policy, process, and technology reinforce one another.
The right ROI software gives your teams a system that supports their judgment, reduces repetitive work, and leaves a clear record of how you protect patient information.
If you are ready to see what modern ROI software could look like in your environment, schedule a consultation with ChartRequest to review your current workflows and explore which options fit best for your organization.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does ROI software help with HIPAA Right of Access?
ROI software gives you a single system to track every patient access request from intake through delivery. It timestamps when each request arrives, routes it to the right queue, and shows how long it has been in progress. That visibility makes it easier to meet 30-day deadlines, document extensions, and prove that you handled each request in a consistent, compliant way.
How is ROI software different from my EHR’s release module?
EHR release modules focus on pushing records out of one system. ROI software manages the full release of information workflow across locations, requestor types, and data sources. It helps with intake, authorization decisions, fee handling, quality checks, delivery, and reporting. For most HIM teams, ROI software becomes the operational system of record for disclosures, while the EHR remains the clinical system of record.
How long does it take to implement ROI software?
Implementation timelines depend on your size, complexity, and how many sites you bring live at once. Many organizations start with a focused pilot in one department or region, then scale. A typical path includes discovery and workflow mapping, configuration, training, and a short period of close monitoring to fine-tune queues and rules. The goal is a phased rollout that shows quick wins without overwhelming your staff.
When is the right time to invest in ROI software?
The right time is usually when existing processes create more risk and frustration than they solve. Common triggers include repeated Right of Access complaints, rising audit activity, staff burnout, inconsistent spreadsheets across sites, or leadership asking for ROI metrics you cannot easily produce. If those signals sound familiar, ROI software gives you a structured way to regain control and show measurable improvement.
