Scope of Medical Provider’s Duty to Provide Records

In 2004, the people of the State of Florida adopted Amendment 7 to the Florida Constitution, which provides that “patients have a right to have access to any records made or received in the course of business by a health care facility or provider relating to any adverse medical incident.”  This constitutional amendment provides an avenue for patients who may be the victims of medical malpractice to obtain records of a health care provider’s adverse medical incident(s).   The term adverse medical incident  is then defined by the amendment to mean medical negligence, intentional misconduct, and any other act, neglect or default of a health care facility or health care provider that caused or could have caused injury to or death of a patient.  This amendment, thus, provides an obligation of medical facilities or providers who are being sued for professional negligence to provide records of such adverse medical incidents when a patient, or his attorney, makes a demand for this information under Amendment 7.

Request for Medical Records

Last month, the First District Court of Appeal considered the circumstance of a hospital (Shands Hospital in Gainesville) receiving a request under this amendment during a lawsuit for an incident report and peer review record relating to an incident involving a patient when he was under the effect of anesthesia. The doctors present at the intubation did not know when the patient’s injury occurred.   The patient, in the lawsuit, claimed that the records requested were material and go to the heart of the case, and no other documents could be substituted for these critical documents.  The hospital, however, conducted its own investigation of the incident, and concluded, on its own, that no medical negligence occurred, and therefore, refused to produce the records on the basis that it was not an adverse medical incident. The lower court agreed with Shands, and refused to require the hospital to produce the two documents. 

Not Just Relevant to Medical Negligence

The appellate court, however, in Baldwin v. Shands, 35 FLW D1605 (Fla. 1^st DCA July 20, 2010) reversed this discovery order on the part of the lower court.  It found that these documents qualified under the definition of and adverse medical incident,  in that, contrary to the position of the hospital, the requirement to produce these records goes not just to medical negligence, but to any other act, neglect or default that caused or could have caused an injury.  More importantly, however, the court recognized that, although public policy favors a hospital to conduct an investigation, no legal authority allowed the hospital, on its own,  to act as the final arbiter in determining whether a medical incident was adverse for the purpose of complying with the statute.  Thus, the court, in a significant decision relating to the obligations of hospitals to comply with these requests to provide information under the amendment, provided a very broad view of the hospital’s duty to provide records of medical incidents that can be deemed to have caused harm to a patient, reversed the trial court, and ordered the hospital to produce the records.  Accordingly, it appears that the scope of a medical provider’s duty to comply with Amendment 7 requests have been broadened by this decision. If you have a situation requiring legal representation, get your no-obligation consultation by contacting Corless Zinober FL  at 866-969-2889.