In November 2017, 19 plaintiffs — including the ex-husband of a former billing specialist — sued Madison, Wis.-based UW Health and Kila Lucey, the former billing employee, for allegedly inappropriately accessing their medical records.
Now, the Wisconsin State Journal reports a Dane County judge reduced the scope of the lawsuit and dismissed all claims against Ms. Lucey as well as those against UW Health by everyone except the ex-husband, G.W. Edward Buckeridge.
According to court records, Ms. Lucey and Mr. Buckeridge divorced in January 2004, but Ms. Lucey accessed Mr. Buckeridge's records 687 times between May 2004 and July 2012 and accessed records of the other plaintiffs between 10 to 948 times in a similar timeframe.
The lawsuit does not state why she improperly accessed 2,629 individual records of the 19 plaintiffs, which included visit summaries, prescription records, laboratory results and medical reports. Ms. Lucey's employment at the hospital ended in June 2016.
Circuit Judge Frank Remington left the claim Mr. Buckeridge made against UW Health for failing to maintain the confidentiality of his medical records and properly supervise Ms. Lucey, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. A jury trial is set for Dec. 3, 2018, and all of the other plaintiffs are appealing the judge's dismissal.
UW Health's lawyers argued the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority couldn't be held responsible for an employee's intentional act. Moreover, because the alleged disclosure was to just one unauthorized person, it did not constitute a public disclosure under Wisconsin law.
Ms. Lucey's attorney added the claims against her should be dismissed because the plaintiffs didn't allege their records had been disclosed outside of the hospital and that viewing the records without disclosing them doesn't violate state law.
According to the judge, only Mr. Buckeridge's claim is viable under state law because he only claimed his records were disclosed to someone else.
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