Tufts Medical Center case alleging privacy breach dismissed

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

A woman who sued Tufts Medical Center and a doctor at the hospital, alleging that they violated her privacy by faxing medical records to her workplace, has agreed to drop the case. The hospital made no offer to settle the lawsuit, filed in Plymouth County Superior Court.

Kimberly White of Middleborough accused Tufts and Dr. Kimberly Schelling of improperly faxing four pages of her medical records to her workplace while she was recovering from a hysterectomy. White said co-workers read them, causing her embarrassment. She sought punitive damages.

The hospital denied wrongdoing from the start, saying that White had requested that the information be sent to her employer. Tufts never made an offer to settle the case, spokeswoman Brooke Tyson Hynes said.

“We’re obviously glad that this has been dismissed,” she said. “From the beginning, we supported the doctor, because the doctor was following the patient’s instructions.”

White’s attorney, Adam Bond, signed an agreement dated Oct. 25 to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the suit cannot be brought to court again. He would not say why his client consented to the dismissal.

“It was a mutually agreed upon conclusion,” Bond said.

Hospitals are required to publicly report privacy breaches that affect at least 500 people. Many of those larger cases involve lost or stolen computers or components of medical records systems that contain unencrypted information. The allegations made by White were that her health information was delivered directly to people who knew her.

In an interview in July, White said the incident with her records had exacerbated her other medical issues and stalled her career. Yesterday, she said that she could not pursue the case, though she remained firm in the belief that she did the right thing in filing it. She declined to comment further.