Medical records are supposed to be between a person and their doctor, but a Maryland man suddenly found himself the owner of hundreds of patients' most private information.
Inside a unit at the Fort Knox storage facility, there's a potential gold mine of information, including boxes of people's medical records. On man unwittingly bought all of it for five dollars.
"Now because I own them, and I don't know what to do with them."
The man, who wants to remain anonymous, thought we was getting a bargain when he bid five dollars, sight unseen, for whatever was in the storage unit. It's the way storage auctions work when the person who owns the items inside gets behind on payments.
"Once I got a chance to explore the bin, it was all medical records."
All of the records from Mitchellville's Atlantic Chiropractic Office, dating from the mid-90's. The records were all unexpectedly person with social security numbers, medical histories and billing information listed.
"I was surprised to get a call from you because you hear of this kind of thing happening to other people but you never would think it would happen to you," said patient's wife Sander Murphy.
The owner of Atlantic Chiropractic, Dr. Douglas Weaver, said he wouldn't explain on camera, but he told an ABC 7/NewsChannel 8's Emily Schmidt he forgot the medical records were in the unit. He moved them there years ago after buying the practice from Dr. Steven Vaughn, whose name was on actually on all the records.
Murphy says she will still go to Dr. Weaver. "I'm just going to ask that they do a better job of storing their medical records."
Late Thursday afternoon, Gary and Dr. Weaver worked out plans to hand over the records for disposal, promising to secure patient privacy the only fail-proof way.
The state board that oversees chiropractors says failing to properly destroy medical records can lead to fines or even license discipline, but the state can't and won't take action unless there's a formal complaint. The finder of the records says he doesn't plan to file such a complaint.
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