Obtaining Medical Records for a deceased parent

What is the name of your state? Missouri and Mississippi

Ok, my father passed a few years ago of sarcoma cancer, and he was involved in a major lawsuit against the place he worked. Well he died before they could get the testing done for the lawsuit, so when we sent the papers in for the lawsuit they needed the medical records from all hospitals, they requested them and they received med records from 3 of the 4 hospitals. The main hospital is located in St. Louis, MO. Now my dad signed a release form before he died, because he was moved to Ms. and the hospital needed his treatment records, they never received all his records just part of them, but when the lawyers requested the paperwork, they flat out said refused. Now my aunt is the legal guardian of his estate and they won't release them to her either, so what are we to do?

get a court order

get a court order to produce.

nakisha25 said:

What is the name of your state? Missouri and Mississippi

Ok, my father passed a few years ago of sarcoma cancer, and he was involved in a major lawsuit against the place he worked. Well he died before they could get the testing done for the lawsuit, so when we sent the papers in for the lawsuit they needed the medical records from all hospitals, they requested them and they received med records from 3 of the 4 hospitals. The main hospital is located in St. Louis, MO. Now my dad signed a release form before he died, because he was moved to Ms. and the hospital needed his treatment records, they never received all his records just part of them, but when the lawyers requested the paperwork, they flat out said refused. Now my aunt is the legal guardian of his estate and they won't release them to her either, so what are we to do?

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You, through the attorney need to suponea the records from the original sources. The hospital or provider is only obligated to produce certian records in response to the subponea, even when it says every jot line and tidle, they are only obligated to produce what they produced because they cannot authenticate other informaiton. For example, a chart may contain lab reports, etc from that facility and these will be sent but not the ambulance report, because it is from a different provider. This is because they cannot authenticate it. When this is the problem, when the records are subponeaed rather than having them produce the documents, send a legal services agent to do the inhouse records copying, then they can copy everything in the file. After this is done you may learn other sources of records. Doing this will also reveal the past records requests, they should be in the file also, and this will show how they decided to send what they sent. Usually it is a clerk who is told to copy a section, and they just do what they are told.

nakisha25

Well he died before they could get the testing done for the lawsuit, so when we sent the papers in for the lawsuit they needed the medical records from all hospitals, they requested them and they received med records from 3 of the 4 hospitals.

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This is not your problem or your aunt's problem. The attorneys know how to handle this and will do so.

EC