Colorado HB26-1414: the $400 medical records fee cap, explained for PI firms

Since August 12, 2026, Colorado caps what a health-care provider or health-care entity can charge for a large attorney records request at $400. For personal injury firms that regularly pull thousand-page hospital files, this is the most direct cost change in years — and most records invoices haven’t caught up. Here is what the law does, where the exception lives, and what your office should change.

What HB26-1414 actually says

HB26-1414 — Medical Record Requests (signed June 4, 2026; effective August 12, 2026) caps at $400 the amount a health-care entity or provider may charge for a record request made by a patient’s attorney — or the attorney of the patient’s personal representative — when the request is made under:

• a HIPAA-compliant authorization,
• a valid subpoena, or
• a valid court order,

and the requested record exceeds 664 pages.

The act also requires electronic delivery when requested and available, and requires providers to invoice within 30 days.

Why the threshold is 664 pages

Colorado’s per-page fee schedule (C.R.S. 25-1-801) charges $18.53 for the first ten pages, $0.85 per page for pages 11–40, and $0.57 per page after that. Run the math and the schedule crosses roughly $400 at 664 pages. So the cap is not a new pricing system — it is a ceiling bolted onto the existing schedule at the point where the old math starts to hurt.

What it saves: a worked example

A 1,500-page hospital production, billed under the per-page schedule:

Segment	Math	Charge
First 10 pages	flat	$18.53
Pages 11–40	30 × $0.85	$25.50
Pages 41–1,500	1,460 × $0.57	$832.20
Old total		$876.23
HB26-1414 total	capped	$400.00

The bigger the file, the bigger the saving — and catastrophic-injury cases with multi-facility records are exactly where five-figure records budgets came from.

The exception to watch

A provider may charge a reasonable fee above the cap when fulfilling the request requires it to segregate, withhold, or redact protected health information to comply with law or with the limits of your authorization.

Two practical consequences:

• Draft authorizations broadly enough that redaction isn’t triggered by your own scope limits. An authorization that carves out categories the chart mixes together invites a redaction surcharge.
• When a vendor invokes the exception, ask for itemization. “Reasonable fee” for claimed redaction work is a negotiable number, not a blank check.

What your firm should do now

1. Audit every records invoice dated on or after August 12, 2026. If the production exceeded 664 pages and the invoice exceeds $400 with no redaction itemization, dispute it and cite the act.
2. Put the citation in your request template. A line noting that the request is subject to the HB26-1414 fee cap sets the expectation before the invoice is cut.
3. Track page counts against invoices. The cap only helps if someone compares what was produced to what was billed — on every file, not just the ones that feel expensive.

That last step is the one that breaks down in a busy practice, because it is bill-by-bill verification work. It is also exactly the reconciliation layer Verodi runs on every case: page counts, invoices, and produced records checked against each other as part of medical records retrieval for law firms, so overcharges get caught the week they happen. For the underlying fee schedule and request requirements, see the companion guide on Colorado medical records request rules.