A Massachusetts woman who received incomplete nursing home records for her mother nearly two months after requesting was justified in using a state consumer law to sue, a court ruled Wednesday.
Sandra Montanez, who requested medical records as guardian for her mother, was appropriate in using the law given the paperwork in question was central to the “entrepreneurial and business aspects of providing medical services,” the Massachusetts Appeals Court said.
Montanez sought records multiple times for Benita Sanchez after the older woman moved out of Lexington Healthcare Center in Lexington. The nursing home only supplied partial records of Sanchez’s care between Jan. 1, 2013 and her transfer in August 2013. Lexington declined to send a full set of certified documents even after Montanez’s lawyer notified the owners that previous copies were incomplete, according to the ruling.
Under federal law, nursing homes have 30 days to grant or deny a request for medical records.
In mid-2014, Montanez sued the home’s owner, 178 Lowell Street Operating Co. LLC, asking for damages and an injunction forcing the nursing home to provide complete records for copying and inspection.
“The defendant’s repeated omission of documents from its disclosures to the plaintiff, its failure to produce complete records for approximately four months, and its offer to allow the plaintiff to inspect and copy its records only (and immediately) after litigation commenced constitute violations of Federal regulation in ways that qualify as unfair or deceptive,” Justice Peter J. Rubin wrote in his opinion.
The court also noted that while Sanchez died during the appeal, the cause of action survived because it involved contractual claims.
