Opinion ID: 3187918
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Requests for Howard’s Medical Record

Text: {¶ 6} On July 24, 2012, Griffith requested a copy of Howard’s complete medical record. The hospital provided some documents in response to this request. Another written request was made on October 17, 2012. On October 22, 2012, the hospital produced the medical record for the period May 2 through 8, 2012, that existed in the medical-records department. On December 12, 2012, Griffith’s representative made an in-person request and was permitted to review what was represented to her as the complete medical record. On December 14, 2012, another written request was made for the medical record. On December 31, 2012, the hospital again produced the medical record that existed in the medical-records department for the period May 2 through 8, 2012. {¶ 7} Griffith then filed this action pursuant to R.C. 3701.74 and 2317.48 to compel the production of Howard’s complete medical record. The complaint alleged that the hospital had failed to produce any monitoring strips or nursing records from Howard’s hospital stay. {¶ 8} After filing the complaint, Griffith served the hospital with requests for admissions and interrogatories. In response, the hospital admitted that prior to filing the action, it had failed to produce Howard’s “entire and complete medical record in response” to each of Griffith’s medical-record requests. In the answer to interrogatories, Jennifer Reagan-Nichols, the director of medical records and transcription at the hospital, verified that after Griffith filed the action, the hospital produced Howard’s entire medical record. Contemporaneously with the answer, the hospital produced hard copies of cardiac-monitoring data from May 6, 2012, “as responsive documents from the visit that are not part of the medical record.” Thereafter, Reagan-Nichols was deposed. {¶ 9} In the initial deposition on March 11, 2013, Reagan-Nichols testified that the hospital had produced Howard’s cardiac-rhythm strips from 4:00 a.m. to 4:51 a.m. on May 6 in response to the request for documents. While monitoring 3 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO strips for a patient that are received by her department would be made part of the medical record, she explained that Howard’s printouts were not part of his medical record because the nursing staff had not provided them to the medical-records department. She did not know who directed the nurses not to print Howard’s data. Reagan-Nichols did not know whether the strips met the legal definition of medical record, but she did not have any reason to believe they did not meet the definition. {¶ 10} On March 14, 2013, the hospital filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that a complete copy of Howard’s medical record had been produced. In support, the hospital provided the sworn interrogatory answers of Reagan-Nichols. {¶ 11} On March 27, 2013, Reagan-Nichols submitted an errata sheet to correct some of her deposition testimony. In that sheet, she stated that the May 6 rhythm strips did not meet the legal definition of medical records. She also stated that the rhythm strips “were printed from electronic monitoring equipment after the discharge of the patient at the direction of hospital Risk Management. The data in this equipment is not part of the medical record.” {¶ 12} Subsequently, the trial court ordered a second deposition to address the issues presented by the errata sheet. In that deposition, Reagan-Nichols stated that to make sure her answers in her first deposition were correct, she asked questions of the hospital’s director of risk management and a registered nurse with the cardiac unit. Reagan-Nichols testified, based on information she had received from the hospital’s director of risk management, that the May 6 rhythm strips provided to Griffith were printed from Howard’s cardiac monitor by a registered nurse after Howard’s death at the direction of the hospital’s risk-management department. She did not know when risk management ordered the nurse to print Howard’s data or whether the nurse printed all the data on the monitor relevant to Howard. 4 January Term, 2016 {¶ 13} Reagan-Nichols stated that the cardiac monitor electronically stored a patient’s data for 24 hours after that patient’s discharge. After 24 hours, however, the information was deleted from the monitor unless a physician ordered that the data be saved. Reagan-Nichols did not know for how long the data would be saved. She believed that all of Howard’s monitoring data was saved. With respect to Howard, Reagan-Nichols did not know if “discharge” meant his transfer from the step-down unit to the intensive-care unit or after his death. {¶ 14} After the second deposition, the hospital produced a cardiac-rhythm strip for Howard from May 3, 2012, at 2:51 a.m. without qualification.