Patients' files poised at trash bin

On April 8, a Lynn storage company is scheduled to discard the records and auction the equipment left by Dr. Ronald T. Moody, who was evicted from his office last September as state regulators pursued him, saying he was practicing without a license. Many of Moody's former patients have no idea that their records are slated for destruction: None has been notified, nor does the law require such notice.

"We throw people's lives away on a daily basis, and, believe me, we go out of our way to try and find someone" to salvage belongings, said Jim Appleyard, owner of the storage company that was hired by Moody's former landlord to clean out the office and store the items for six months, as required by law.

But the idea of dumping hundreds of patients' files without them knowing about it bothered Appleyard. Unable to find Moody, he contacted the state Board of Registration in Medicine and pleaded to take the dozens of boxes of records. The board regulates doctors and administers rules governing medical records of physicians in private and group practices.

A board investigator visited the warehouse, expressed surprise at the sheer number of Moody's records, and then said her hands were tied.

"She said, 'I have no ability to move it, no budget to move it, and no place to store it,' " Appleyard said. "And I'm just a mover. I don't have the wherewithal to track these patients."

Moody, 62, could not be contacted and did not respond to a written request, left at his home, for an interview.

The medical board has initiated regulatory action against Moody, saying he practiced and prescribed without a license and failed to provide patients access to their medical records. It is unclear what additional legal liabilities, if any, he may face.

Last year, Attorney General Martha Coakley's office pursued a Weymouth-based dentist for abruptly abandoning his practice and his patients' medical records.

Russell Aims, spokesman for the state medical board, said the Moody case highlights a medical records dilemma the board has wrestled with before. Regulators have yet to come up with a solution, he said.

"The difficulty is, the board's authority extends only to a physician's license," Aims said. "The board doesn't have authority to accept or hold patients' medical records. It's perhaps a statutory deficiency that there is no vehicle in state government to do this."

Medical records detail a patient's health history, including critical information such as potentially life-threatening allergies to medications. Aims declined to comment on how many of Moody's patients have tried to track down their files, but the board's charges against him say that an unspecified number have attempted to get their records.

The case has been referred to the state's Division of Administrative Law Appeals. Under state law, physicians are required to keep a patient's medical record for seven years after the last contact with the patient. After that, the physician is allowed to destroy the record and is not required to notify the patient. The law also requires the estate of a deceased physician and doctors who inherit a practice to follow these rules.

Neither state law nor the board's regulations cover the disposition of medical records when a doctor abruptly closes and abandons his practice. The Massachusetts Medical Society, the physicians' trade association, also has no policy for addressing abandoned medical records, said spokesman Richard Gulla. Moody is listed as a society member, Gulla said.

The situation also underscores the urgency of state and national initiatives to convert the countless paper files of doctors across the country to electronic health records.

It is unlikely that Moody kept electronic copies of the hundreds of paper files, Aims said. The majority of physicians in private practice do not. A Harvard study last year found that just 17 percent of American doctors had switched from paper to electronic health records. A state law passed last year requires most health providers to adopt electronic records by 2015.

Moody, a graduate of the Medical University of South Carolina, has held a medical license in Massachusetts since 1981, according to state records. But he failed to renew his license when it expired in December 2007, despite notices and phone calls from regulators, according to the Board of Registration's files.

He continued to treat patients until mid-February 2008, and wrote prescriptions for patients until two days before he was evicted from his Acton office on Sept. 19, the records show. Under court order, the contents of his office were moved at that time to the Lynn storage facility.

Moody's abrupt departure mystified even the landlord who rented to him for 20 years and finally evicted him after the doctor fell behind on the rent.

"He was a good doctor," said George Keramaris, the Acton landlord. "My dad went there, and he took care of him. I like the guy."

Keramaris added: "I was always hoping that he would catch up and pay his bills."

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com