CHARLESTON—The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has ruled that a hospital should not have disclosed personal medical records involving mental health in response to a subpoena.
The appeals court ruled that Wood Circuit Court wrongfully dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who claimed Camden Clark Memorial Hospital disclosed her medical records, according to the May 31 opinion.
The Supreme Court reversed Wood Circuit Court's order and remanded the case to the state court for further proceedings.
Justice Allen Loughry authored the majority opinion. Justice Beth Walker recused herself from the case and Kanawha Circuit Judge Tod J. Kaufman took her place. Chief Justice Margaret Workman dissented and authored a separate opinion. Kaufman concurred with the dissent and reserved the right to file a separate opinion.
According to the opinion, Jill C. Barber filed a lawsuit against Sedwick Claims Management Services in 2014 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. In that lawsuit, she claimed the company mismanaged her worker's compensation claim and was fraudulent.
Two years later, Sedwick subpoenaed the hospital and requested Barber's medical records. The appeals court said the hospital provided more than 1,000 pages of Barber's records, including records indicating that she received mental health treatment as a teenager.
Copies of the records were provided to Barber's counsel in February 2016, but her counsel did not review the documents and Barber had never informed her counsel of the mental health treatment.
While Barber was being deposed in the case, she was asked if she had ever received any mental health treatment. When she said she hadn't, the defendant's attorneys challenged her statement and produced the mental health treatment records that were received from the hospital.
Barber then filed a lawsuit in Wood Circuit Court against the hospital on Jan. 23, 2017, alleging that the hospital should not have turned over her confidential records without her consent.
The hospital filed a motion to dismiss Barber's lawsuit, claiming that it had abided by the Medical Records Act and did not err in providing the records.
The circuit court dismissed Barber's complaint on June 12, 2017, stating that Barber had never raised an objection to the subpoena when it had been filed.
In the appeals court opinion, Loughry wrote that failing to object to the subpoena did not fulfill the requirement for written consent needed to comply with the West Virginia Code's requirements for disclosure of mental health records.
The appeals court found that the circuit court should not have dismissed the complaint.
In her dissenting opinion, Workman said she believed the majority misread the mental health statute.
Workman wrote that she felt the hospital had properly responded to the subpoena, as it was its duty under state law.