I have a medical professional corporation. I recently terminated a physician because she was submittinjg false claims. She nows wants access to all patient records to prove she was paid for all patients she saw and such services were not credited to another physician. The practice is in Pennsylvania. What privacy rights do I have to prevent complying with such a request for documents.
Optional Information: State/Country relating to Question: Pennsylvania Already Tried: Currently in the case is in binding arbitration. The contract with the terminated physician is an independent contractor. She received a portion of the revenue received from the patient or insurance company. Now that she has been terminated, she wants to view all of our book keeping to prove no other physician was credited for the servics she performed. This seems to me to be a violation of the company's right to privacy. Are there any PA cases showing precedance regarding PA Business record privacy?
Hello. There is no such "business record privacy" laws in any states, and all business records are subject to court order and/or subpoena if they become the subject of a lawsuit. Your major issues are the patients right to privacy under the HIPPA regulations, and while you are going to be obligated to turn over records regarding what was billed and what this physician was involved in, there is no way that you should be turning over anything to do with patient files and records to anyone outside of the practice unless a court orders you to do so and can come up with some method to insure that the information that is reviewed and extracted from these records does not constitute violations of the HIPPA reulations. Even simple bookkeeping records may identify patient issues/problems that this physician and attorneys have no right to review under HIPPA. What you need to do here is object to the arbitrator that such a review can be a violation of the HIPPA regulations for patient privacy on all levels, and see if the arbitrator can come up with a plausible solution regarding the review of any medical billing records (regarding actual patient files, you should not turn those over, period, unless your attorney advises you to do so). Perhaps the arbitrator can review the billing records to determine that this physician was credited appropriately without actaully disclosing the information about the patient and other procedures from the patients billing records.
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