zlacker

They actually aren't. The only reason that is necessitated is A) medicare/medicaid integration is strongly predicated on EMR, and our damn insurance model is cripplingly dependent in it.

There's nothing that keeps a medical provider from going old school.

Unless I'm completely overlooking something... It may have snuck in with ACA.

>>salawa+(OP)
Yes you are overlooking a variety of more recent federal laws and associated interoperability regulations, some of which apply even to providers that only accept direct payments from patients and don't bill third-party payers (insurers).

The basic guiding principle in force since HIPAA in 1996 is that patients, not providers, control access to their medical records regardless of whether those are stored on paper or in an EHR. If the patient authorizes sharing those records with another healthcare organization then the provider can charge a small fee for that service but they can't introduce additional spurious technical requirements on the receiving system.