WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Recent networks outages at St. Mary's Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach are prompting more questions as patients voice concerns about access to their medical records.
If a network outage hinders a patient's ability to access their electronic records, what rights do they have? The answer is not many.
The phone and some information technology systems have been down at the hospital since Wednesday morning, causing a mounting list of questions, concerns and confusion.
RELATED: Tenet Health says systems are coming back, calls patient worries 'preposterous'
"From what I've seen in the news, Tenet isn't giving a lot of information, which must be frustrating," said Craig Goldenfarb, a medical malpractice attorney keeping a close watch on the situation. "That's a little bit concerning."
He's seen the limited response offered by Tenet Health, the corporation that owns the two hospitals.
Since last week, patients have told WPTV that the medical staff is relying on paper charting to update records and physically leaving the hospital to use phones.
"So, a patient who may be going through this. What are their rights?" asked reporter Linnie Supall.
"Well, right now, their rights aren't many because they do have a 30-day window with which to provide you the records," Goldenfarb said. "If it goes beyond that, or if it gets close to that, the Florida Department of Health has a Consumer Affairs division where you can file a complaint. You can either file a complaint or the easiest thing to do is frankly, keep calling the hospital, be a pest, call every day to see when the information systems are back up."
Goldenfarb also warns that patients who need their medical records for additional care outside of the hospital system could experience an untimely delay.
"That's actually the scariest part is that many practitioners outside of a hospital setting depend on hospital records to make some health care decisions," Goldenfarb said. "If those practitioners don't have access to the hospital records, it could create an unnecessary and maybe even dangerous delay."
