Lavender Sky Health exposed my wife's (life saving & emergency) abortion care

[chmuse]

Same as @chmuse said .. as someone who has to abide HIPAA laws for work and had also worked extensively with medical records, it's genuine curiosity on where their process failed. Obviously they are wrong and something failed, I'd just like to understand how.

Did this employee download the records and attach the wrong file to the email? Did they use a "send direct to patient" option and enter the wrong email address? Were the names similar? Did they not verify a secondary identifier like DOB?

Like, what happened? Lol. Most of my experience is with Epic, which I am pretty sure they're not using, otherwise we'd all just have a portal to access and wouldn't need to ask for records to be supplied manually. So somewhere, for some reason, an employee had to take all these deliberate steps to send a medical record, and during one of those steps, hit the wrong button or entered the wrong information.

I'm just curious what happened.

Exactly. I don't work in medical records, so I don't know exactly how they handle these things, or even if I did, how telehealth does (usually in order to get records you need to either log into your portal, or show up with ID. We don't send records via email unless you specifically sign a waiver asking for it.)

I am not in any way trying to imply @brisket did anything wrong. I just want to know how they managed to make such a stupid ass mistake. I won't even confirm someone's spouse is a patient unless they're listed as emergency contact.

 

[Vicki]

I didn't even realize your spouse couldn't see your medical records.

 

[Vicki]

I kind of agree. It states what happened, not how.

The employee would have had to access two separate charts and download information from two places. That's not a mistake, even if it was an accident.

Unless I'm misunderstanding? OP, @brisket did you request your medical records and receive both yours and your wife's, or did you both request your own medical records and received each other's instead? That I could see being easier to explain.

Maybe they used the same mailing address or phone numbers on their accounts? Or same anything who knows. They live together I'm assuming.

Sometimes the dr uses only my phone number to look up my records then they confirm date of birth after. Could be someone skipped a step and could see both charts.

 

[chmuse]

I didn't even realize your spouse couldn't see your medical records.

They can if you sign forms giving them permission.

Maybe they used the same mailing address or phone numbers on their accounts? Or same anything who knows. They live together I'm assuming.

Sometimes the dr uses only my phone number to look up my records then they confirm date of birth after. Could be someone skipped a step and could see both charts.

That's the thing, if they looked it up by address/ phone number and two charts popped up, they absolutely should have asked further questions instead of just.... Giving @brisket both charts? That's incredibly stupid.

 

[Grannuaile]

I didn't even realize your spouse couldn't see your medical records.

Male spouses/partners are the number one killers of women, that is why privacy is such a big concern.

 

[Vicki]

Male spouses/partners are the number one killers of women, that is why privacy is such a big concern.

Yes it makes sense for sure. It just seems like this is always violated the few times I've been in the er with my husband. Sometimes the nurse will ask if it's okay to speak in front of me but there's been times they just talk and don't ask permission.