Medical Records

As the Department of Veterans Affairs evacuated hundreds of patients from its New Orleans hospital three days before the levees failed, another crucial part of the federal government's relief effort was air-lifted to Houston: two backup computer tapes holding more than 180,000 electronic health records. The tapes included veterans' allergies, medicines and basic information -- enough data that any evacuated veteran could be treated at any veterans hospital. Without electronic records, hospital staff would have spent critical minutes, even hours, lugging thousands of paper files to higher ground.

Baltimore Police want to know whether a man suing police for deleting images from his camera at the 2010 Preakness has a drug history, and have reached out to his ex-wife and former employers, an effort his attorneys say amounts to harassment and intimidation. In recent filings in U.S. District Court, police said "whether or not the plaintiff is a drug addict is absolutely material to his competency as a witness. " They have sought phone records, employment records, spoken to his ex-wife's mother and boyfriend, and want the result of a hair follicle test from 2007 divorce proceedings.

Carnetta McGriff, a medical records supervisor, died of pneumonia Friday at Northwest Hospital Center. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 51. Born Carnetta Wynn Spencer in Baltimore and raised on Carleview Road, she was a 1970 graduate of Forest Park High School. She earned an associate's degree from what is now Baltimore City Community College. She managed medical records at the old Provident and Lutheran hospitals, and for the past four years was a medical records director at the Park West Medical Center in Reisterstown Road Plaza.

I find The Sun's editorial regarding Mitt Romney's tax returns somewhat comical ("Many unhappy returns?" July 19). First, why the outcry for years of back tax returns other than something for the Democrats (and their spokesmen in the so-called mainstream media) to use for the insidious game of class warfare. Next, I see that you quote droves of "establishment" Republicans, certainly not any legitimate conservative tea party representatives as your primary source of cries from the GOP to release the records.

WASHINGTON -- Frolicking teen-agers occasionally bust into the computer systems of the Pentagon, banks and other supposed bastions of electronic security. If they can do it, what's to prevent intrusions into computerized medical records by nosy employers, anxious lovers, professional rivals, crafty salesmen and curious kooks?Actually, very little. Over the past decade, that's been the consistent conclusion of a variety of studies by specialists in medicine, law and computers.They were mainly looking ahead to the inevitable day when computer wizardry would be extensively employed for the improvement of patient care.

Elizabeth E. Miller, a retired medical records administrator at Kernan Hospital, died of heart failure Monday at St. Joseph Medical Center. The longtime Towson resident was 75. She was born Elizabeth Eastman in Baltimore, the daughter of Dr. Nicholas Eastman, a noted Johns Hopkins Hospital obstetrician and author of Expectant Motherhood. She spent her early years in Beijing, where her father had a medical post. The family returned to Homeland, and she graduated in 1946 from Roland Park Country School.

Lamona K. Burdusi, a medical records worker and longtime member of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, died of complications from a broken hip Dec. 7 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Bel Air resident was 73. She was born and raised Lamona Kootsouradis in Monessen, Pa., the daughter of Greek immigrants. In 1955, after her parents died, she moved to Baltimore. In 1959, she married John M. Burdusi, who worked in the sausage-making department at Esskay meatpacking, and settled in Baltimore's Greektown neighborhood.

Patients of the land, unite! You have nothing to lose but your privacy. There's a growing national effort to bring medical records into the 21st century by converting the paper records scattered in doctors' file cabinets to electronic records by 2014. It's a grand idea - in many ways. If medical records were electronic, prescriptions would be more legible and pharmacists could fill them more accurately. Scientists would have access to a gold mine of data about diseases. Public health officials could spot disease outbreaks quickly and track their spread.

Rush Limbaugh's five-month fight to keep his medical records from Palm Beach County prosecutors went before an appeals court yesterday, in what likely will result in a pivotal decision on whether the criminal investigation into his prescription drug use can go forward. Miami attorney Roy Black portrayed the prosecution's seizure of Limbaugh's medical records late last year as an invasion of privacy that could have adverse effects on the doctor-patient relationship for all Florida residents.

Since many health plans and doctors get paid a flat monthly rate for each patient, won't they want well patients instead of sick ones?"Good health plans recognize they need to protect both patients and physicians" by adjusting reimbursement based on patient health, said Jonathan P. Weiner, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and one of the authors of an article on reimbursement in today's issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.The...

A day after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut in half the threshold for determining lead exposure in the nation's children, pediatricians faced the task of identifying new cases from thousands of their old files. The recommendation from the CDC recognizes what doctors have long believed: that any amount of lead can be harmful. And they expressed satisfaction that the level was lowered. But the new guidance will likely pose new logistical and financial challenges for doctors and public health officials.

A Baltimore County judge denied Mark Midei's appeal for reinstatement of his medical license, ruling that there was "substantial evidence" for the Maryland Board of Physicians to revoke it last year after finding that the Towson cardiologist falsified patient records to justify the placement of unnecessary coronary stents. The decision ends an ordeal that began more than three years ago, when an anonymous letter was sent to the state board, claiming Midei, a well-regarded physician who earned a seven-figure salary at St. Joseph Medical Center, was improperly treating patients.

Margaret E. Faya, a retired medical records supervisor at Spring Grove Hospital Center, died June 21 of complications of an infection at Howard County General Hospital. The Columbia resident was 91. Born Mary Elizabeth Burkman in Baltimore, she grew up on North Rose Street in East Baltimore. In an autobiographical sketch, she recalled her childhood as the daughter of a father who worked in the seafood industry shucking oysters. Her mother sewed buttons on men's shirts at the Aetna shirt factory.

March 23, 2011 It was after 1 a.m. on June 5, 2010. Tyrone Brown had already had plenty to drink. But he wasn't ready to go home. The 32-year-old Baltimore native tried to drag his sister and a friend into Club Hippo, but they didn't want to go into a gay bar , according to a police account. He got touchy with some women standing outside, moving to hug one, and grabbing the butt of another. When she smacked him, he shoved her back. The woman's companion stepped in. As the confrontation escalated, the companion - off-duty Baltimore Police Officer Gahiji Tshamba - pulled his service weapon and unloaded it into Brown.

Are you ready for Watson to join you and your doctor in the examining room? That could be the outcome of a collaboration under way between Watson's creators at IBM and experts at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine. They have begun work on merging the speech recognition and question-answering skills of Watson — the computer that beat two humans on "Jeopardy!" this week — with the vast stores of clinical knowledge and analytical skills in the medical profession.

A Charlottesville, Va., judge ruled Wednesday that defense attorneys cannot review years of medical records of the University of Virginia women's lacrosse player slain in May, saying the documents contained nothing out of the ordinary or relevant to the case. In a hearing that lasted about five minutes, General District Court Judge Robert H. Downer Jr. said attorneys for George Huguely, who is charged with murder in the death of his ex-girlfriend, Yeardley Love, could look at Love's prescription for Adderall but nothing else in her medical records.

PRESIDENT CLINTON finally issued new rules last week on privacy of medical records -- a move made necessary by an appalling history of abuse and commercial manipulation of private medical data. The regulations (naturally criticized by the health-care industry for costs and recordkeeping burdens) are a matter of common sense. Patients must give permission before their records are disclosed. They have a right to inspect and make copies of their own medical records, and to request corrections of inaccurate and incomplete information.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Rush Limbaugh's attorneys went on the offensive yesterday, in an effort to keep the conservative radio commentator's medical records sealed after they recently were seized by prosecutors investigating his prescription drug use. Limbaugh's attorneys filed a court action asking a judge to review the propriety of the seizure of the medical records, which are under seal and haven't been reviewed by prosecutors. They asked for a hearing in the next three days to assert Limbaugh's right to privacy and to prevent prosecutors from gaining access to them.