Karen M. Cheung has more on the Prime Healthcare case, reporting that the FBI has interviewed the patient who gave her records to California Watch.
While much of the report concerns the original focus of possible fraudulent billing of Medicare, some of the story concerns the privacy aspects.
Reading it, you can understand why Prime Healthcare wanted the paper to see the patient’s records, as there is material in there that reportedly contradicts or at least calls into question California Watch’s original reporting on the case. But even so, that doesn’t give them the right to disclose the patient’s records without consent.
For a more neutral perspective on the Medicare billing aspects than California Watch seems to have provided, see the Record Searchlight’s “Note from the Editor” today.