Defunct Doctor Dumps Private Records

Story first appeared in The Washington Post.


Overland Park, Kan.— More than 1,000 private abortion records from a defunct clinic have been found discarded in a recycling bin outside an elementary school near Kansas City, Kan., prompting a police investigation and outrage from people on both sides of the abortion debate.  This could amount to a  Wichita Medical Malpractice Lawyer investigating the data, which includes breach of doctor/patient confidentiality.

The patient records found Saturday came from Affordable Medical and Surgical Services in Kansas City, Kan., which closed after its doctor lost his medical license in 2005. The records detail names, birth dates, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers and the patients' health history, including if any abortions were performed, The Kansas City Star reported. They included patients from almost every county in the Kansas City area and beyond, from Topeka to Freeman, Mo.  This information lends itself to a very large invasion of privacy, and possible medical negligence that aid a Wichita Medical Malpractice Lawyer in their case against the defunct doctor in question.

Between 2000 and 2005, the doctor was either fined or disciplined four times by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts and inspectors who visited his clinic in 2005 and reported it was not clean.  This leads to substandard care being a possible factor, and again assists the ideas of a Wichita Medical Malpractice Lawyer building a claim against the doctor.

The daughter of the woman who found the records contacted the Kansas City Star after Overland Park police initially declined to respond to her call. The women did not want their names released.

Overland Park police were investigating and other agencies, including the Johnson County district attorney's office and the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, were seeking information about the handling of the documents to determine if they lend themselves to a Wichita Personal Injury Lawyer and their building case.

The doctor said he threw the personal documents into recycling bins at Brookridge Elementary School on Friday.  Kansas law requires that all medical records be kept a minimum of 10 years. Hundreds of the discarded records were dated after March 2002, The Star said. The defunct doctor said he dumped the records because they were old and that he thought they would be picked up quickly. The bins are emptied monthly.

The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, makes it a federal violation to release private medical information without patient permission or other authorization. The law does not dictate exactly how medical records should be destroyed but it specifically prohibits discarding records in public dumpsters unless they have been made unreadable.

It is unclear what actions might be taken against the unscrupulous doctor. Medical providers that don't transmit payment or other information to third-party payers electronically are not subject to HIPAA regulations. On Monday, the doctor said his clinic was cash-only, although some of the retrieved records clearly showed photocopies of insurance cards on the back page, The Star reported.