Optometrist’s failure to arrange secure storage and transfer of records amounts to professional misconduct

Your professional and legal responsibility to securely store and manage patient records does not end when your practice closes or you retire. Facilitating patient access to their healthcare information supports continuity of care and helps avoid serious consequences, including the risk of deregistration.  

It is important to inform patients and other practitioners about your practice’s closure and provide clear advice to your patients on how healthcare records can be accessed or transferred.  

Maintaining a detailed register of patient records and where they have been stored or transferred ensures you meet your obligations. 

An optometrist in New Zealand faced disciplinary proceedings over their failure to ensure continuity of patient care when their business went into liquidation and four practices were closed.  

Access to and transfer of health records 

 The regulator claimed the optometrist had failed to: 

• inform patients or their healthcare providers that the business was closing and that they would no longer be providing eye care 
• provide patients with the names of alternative providers 
• make appropriate arrangements to store or retain their patients’ records 
• enable records to be transferred to a new provider at patients’ request. 

Evidence before the tribunal indicates there were between 20–30,000 physical files that needed to be stored.  

Patients gave evidence they had no notice of the practice’s closure and were unable contact the optometrist. Some had made multiple attempts to access their records through the liquidator, who had also been unable to contact the optometrist. 

The optometrist eventually made contact a year after the practice closure. They claimed the bankruptcy meant they had no place to store the records themselves and that the records belonged to the company not them personally. Further, they argued patients could easily go to another optometrist for an eye exam and lack of access to records was not a threat to a person’s sight. 

Nevertheless, they claimed they had arranged for the records to be stored safely and that over 400 patients had managed to make contact and access their records.  

Eventually the records were transferred to another optometrist business, nearly 18 months after the practices closed. 

Professional and legal obligations 

The relevant professional standard required practitioners to promptly and cooperatively comply with patient requests for release of their personal information, and to communicate clearly with the patient about the information held, the intended recipients, the process for releasing, and any other matters that the patient should be aware of.  

The applicable privacy requirements included that practitioners must ensure health information was stored safely and securely and that records were returned to patients, or transferred to another competent practitioner or professional body when they retired from practice. 

The tribunal accepted that the liquidation of the optometrist’s business would have been a stressful experience. However, there were many steps the optometrist could have taken to advise other practitioners and patients how to access records, even in those circumstances.  

The tribunal found the records had been placed in an unsecured warehouse, which did not satisfy the requirement to store them safely and securely. The optometrist had not taken adequate steps to inform patients how to access them and in fact had concealed the exact whereabouts of the records. They had denied responsibility and demonstrated complete lack of insight into the seriousness or implications of their conduct. 

This reflected a total disregard for their professional obligations and a significant departure from required standard of care, constituting professional misconduct. 

The optometrist was censured and their registration cancelled. While acknowledging that the optometrist was bankrupt, the tribunal also made an order for costs of $27,300 plus GST. 

While this case involves an optometrist, all health practitioners are under the same legal obligations to store healthcare records safely and securely. This does not end when you retire or close your practice, however abruptly.  

Ensuring patients have access to their healthcare information after you stop treating them is also part of your professional obligations and you must comply with laws regarding storage and retention of records. 

Take steps to inform patients and other practitioners about the closure of your practice and how they can access their records. 

Patients may choose to collect a copy of their record, or they may request that you transfer a copy to a new practitioner. 

Ensure that you keep a register of all patient records and what has happened to each record. 

If a practice closure is sudden or unexpected, seek advice from your legal and professional associations who can help ensure your obligations are met. 

Avant factsheet – Medical records: the essentials 

Avant factsheet – Preparing for retirement 

Avant factsheet – Storing, retaining and disposing of medical records