Third parties viewing patient records

In cancer, you run across a lot of patients who either completely avoid or are very mistrustful of the medical system — down to questioning your motivations for recommending a particular treatment (whatever that treatment is — radiation, surgery, chemotherapy, hospice). And I wonder, "Why?" Then I see a story like this in mainstream press that shines some light on things.

It appears from the story that a personal injury attorney is accused of paying to access hospitalized patients' records. Now that part seems bad enough, until you read on and find out that this lawyer got access to the patients' records through an ultrasound technician who got a cut of any successful litigation (meaning, I assume, a finding of malpractice against a health care provider). What a disgrace, on many levels.

If you read the comments on the WSJ blog, several say that this was a good thing because health care providers lie and cover up their mistakes all the time, so why shouldn't they be caught? While I can agree that honesty surrounding medical errors and immediate disclosure are the best policy, this story somehow seemed more nefarious to me than one person concerned about patients seeking to hold doctors more accountable, especially when that person directly profits from lawsuits brought because of the error.

Another intriguing comment comes from "laszlo" who writes, "Probably not a legitimate practice ... but consider, how is this different from a drug company that pays a third party to do chart reviews or ask ER or hospital nurses to do prescription audits to determine either potential research subjects or to suggest switching strategies?" I do get those prescription audits all the time, and I view them as a sometimes helpful tool, especially if a patient is, unbeknownst to me, getting opiate prescriptions from multiple sources. What do you think — are there times when a third party should be reviewing patient records?