Could your private medical file be sitting in some guy’s garage in Indio? A small cataloging and storage company claims it has the records of hundreds of thousands of Kaiser patients that KP hired it to process, but refuses to pay the bill to return or destroy.
Kaiser Permanente stuck in odd struggle with tiny Indio vendor – San Francisco Business TimesStephan Dean of Surefile Filing Systems
Giant Kaiser Permanente has found itself locked in a David-and-Goliath-scale struggle with a tiny Southern California record storage vendor over up to 1 million unencrypted Kaiser patient records the vendor claims remain on servers in his house and garage.
On the subject of missing files, November 2005 I was contacted by the L.A. Sheriff’s office, asking if I knew a person by a certain name, who lived in L.A. I said no, the Deputy asked, if you don’t know this person, why does he have your complete medical records in his possession, he was arrested and later confessed that he had a friend that worked at Kaiser Hospital Fontana,Ca. he would get patients records and make copies of the whole file, this person was entering my records onto a site on his computer, he later told the deputy that he sold this information, and split this money with his partner, who worked at Kaiser Hospital. Kaiser states that it is against the law to remove patients files from the hospital, but Kaiser allows their Senior members Rep (Ms Carol Canady) who’s office is in another town, she is allowed to remove these files when their is a pending suit against Kaiser, this is allowed to happen so Kaisers attorneys can remove records from patients files that shows mistakes made by their medical staff. my wifes files were missing from July 2006 to November 2007, Kaiser lets nothing stand in their way of making the Ol mighty buck. R.May
That is all very true, Richard. That’s why we always tell people to keep copies of their medical records as they go. Kaiser controls all of the evidence and alters at will. We can’t say that enough.
Oh my gosh, I cannot believe this, or actually, I can, since it is coming from Kaiser.
How could I ever forget what they put us through trying to get a hold of a very important piece to the puzzle when they killed my baby girl, Lehna Jordann Brewer in 2006.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-04-29-medical-records_N.htm
Even though they win most of their rigged arbitrations, they are losers all the way around.
I was sent a response from a Kaiser online pharmacist of a question and answer for another member. Secure communications and now I know a lot of personal information about this guy. Who has gotten my information I wonder…?
That’s very interesting, Herb. If you posted this anywhere else you would probably hear from Kaiser by Monday, but since they like to pretend they don’t pay attention to what is said on this website they may very well accidentally ignore you on purpose. Or they may contact you anyway and pretend they discovered the breach themselves, which of course would not be the truth. I suggest contacting the California Department of Managed Health Care as soon as possible. They might give Kaiser a little flick on the wrist and very politely ask them to please try not to do that again. You also might try to contact the guy the information belongs to, because he has a very valid HIPAA complaint. If he doesn’t know what to do about that, give him my email address and I’ll enlighten him.
Interestingly enough, I’m disputing an issue with KP Mid Atlantic, and their reply letter to me was addressed me, but the salutation line listed another person’s name! Who got the letter with my name?
Very disturbing indeed. Their attention to detail is crap!