Following the two Appeals Court victories last year, see Montanez v. 178 Lowell Street Operating Company LLC, 95 Mass. App. Ct. 699 (2019) (http://masscases.com/cases/app/95/95massappct699.html) and Pennington v. Steward Health Care Systems, LLC & others, 18-P-1153 (2019) ( https://casetext.com/case/pennington-matte-v-steward-health-care-sys ), health care providers in Massachusetts are finally following the controlling rules and regulations and providing their patients and customers with their records, and when they fail to do so, they are paying for the damages incurred and costs associated with getting all the records.
Defendants UMass Memorial Health Care systems and their records provider Sharecare paid $75,000.00 for attorneys’ fees, costs, and other damages, when suit was required just to get the patients’ complete medical records.
Patient of the UMass Memorial Health Care system, who was clearly a victim of medical malpractice and gross negligence, requested her records from the defendants, so her potential claim could be investigated. But the defendants, and their for-profit partner/records provider, refused to timely provide the complete set of records, likely to avoid the forthcoming malpractice suit.
After the chapter 93A unfair business practices claim was placed in suit additional records were finally provided (evidencing the assumed negligence) but causing months of delay and thousands of dollars in costs and fees. Faced with the recent Appeals Court decisions unequivocally categorizing such behavior as improper, defendants settled the unfair and deceptive practices claims, paying for all the damages incurred. (stay tuned as the medical malpractice claim can finally proceed forward).