Med Mal News

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Doctor Gets No Damages After Contracting TB

A New York intermediate appeals court has overturned an award of $500,000 to a physician who contracted tuberculosis while conducting an autopsy. Claimant Dr. Natasha Muckova sought redress when she contracted the disease from a deceased prison inmate during an ordinary autopsy, though she claims she would have used a special autopsy room for high-risk cases had the body been accompanied by records showing the deceased had had a highly contagious form of mycobacterium tuberculosis. In reversing, the appeals court in Muckova v. State held that the State of New York owed no duty to the doctor to maintain accurate records.

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Is Theft of Hard Drive a 'Release' of Confidential Medical Records?

On Oct. 15, 2011, an unidentified thief broke into Sutter Medical Foundation's administrative offices, stealing a computer. While this was bad news for the physicians' group, worse news was soon forthcoming: that computer's hard drive contained confidential information on 4 million patients, and California's Confidentiality of Medical Information Act provides nominal damages of $1,000 per individual for negligent release of such data. Several law firms have now brought suit on behalf of multiple plaintiffs, despite the fact that there is no evidence to date that any of the information has been accessed since the computer's theft.

The plaintiffs say the damage is done, since their information is now “out there” and could be used for any number of nefarious reasons, at any time. Sutter's attorneys, however, claim confidentiality is lost only when the information is made known to an unauthorized person. Because of this basic dispute, California's Third District Court of Appeal stayed proceedings on Jan. 17 and has now ordered a briefing on the question of whether the theft of the computer, without more, amounts to a release of confidential medical information.

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Value of Electronic Medical Records Falls Short of Expectations

The Rand Corporation, the health policy research company, disclosed on Jan. 7 that research indicates the anticipated cost-savings associated with the implementation of electronic medical record-keeping have not materialized. Rand's 2005 projections of huge cost-savings, better efficiency and improved patient care have not come to pass, according to Rand's researchers, not because the ideas behind the push for electronic record-keeping were flawed, but because the information technology systems now being used are not optimal. Rand suggests that: 1) Electronic health records be made more universally accessible to medical providers, even those in other health care systems than the ones storing the records; 2) Patients be able to access their own records (similar to how they access their bank account information) and be able to share them with different providers; and 3) Record-keeping systems be made more user-friendly, so that health care providers can use them with little training.

The 2005 study, which predicted that electronic record-keeping could bring annual savings of $81 million to the United States, caused some skepticism at the time because it was paid for by companies that stood to profit from selling electronic medical record-keeping systems to doctors and hospitals. “Seven years later,” according to the Rand release announcing the researchers' most recent study results, “the evidence about the safety and efficiency of health information technology is mixed and annual health care spending has grown by $800 billion annually.”

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Doctor Gets No Damages After Contracting TB

A New York intermediate appeals court has overturned an award of $500,000 to a physician who contracted tuberculosis while conducting an autopsy. Claimant Dr. Natasha Muckova sought redress when she contracted the disease from a deceased prison inmate during an ordinary autopsy, though she claims she would have used a special autopsy room for high-risk cases had the body been accompanied by records showing the deceased had had a highly contagious form of mycobacterium tuberculosis. In reversing, the appeals court in Muckova v. State held that the State of New York owed no duty to the doctor to maintain accurate records.

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Is Theft of Hard Drive a 'Release' of Confidential Medical Records?

On Oct. 15, 2011, an unidentified thief broke into Sutter Medical Foundation's administrative offices, stealing a computer. While this was bad news for the physicians' group, worse news was soon forthcoming: that computer's hard drive contained confidential information on 4 million patients, and California's Confidentiality of Medical Information Act provides nominal damages of $1,000 per individual for negligent release of such data. Several law firms have now brought suit on behalf of multiple plaintiffs, despite the fact that there is no evidence to date that any of the information has been accessed since the computer's theft.

The plaintiffs say the damage is done, since their information is now “out there” and could be used for any number of nefarious reasons, at any time. Sutter's attorneys, however, claim confidentiality is lost only when the information is made known to an unauthorized person. Because of this basic dispute, California's Third District Court of Appeal stayed proceedings on Jan. 17 and has now ordered a briefing on the question of whether the theft of the computer, without more, amounts to a release of confidential medical information.

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