Carl Short Ex Rel. Allison Hope Short v. Metro Knoxville HMA, LLC, Et Al. - Dissent

I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to reverse the trial court’s dismissal of this action. I believe that the trial court properly relied on this Court’s majority opinion in Parks v. Walker, No. E2017-01603-COA-R3-CV, 2018 WL 6242461 (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 28, 2018), perm. app. denied (Tenn. Mar. 27, 2019), as an analogous case. The trial court found that the plaintiff, Carl Short (“Plaintiff”), had failed to substantially comply with Tennessee Code Annotated § 29-26-121(a)(2)(E) (Supp. 2018), which provides that written pre-suit notice shall include a HIPPA-compliant medical authorization “permitting the provider receiving the notice to obtain complete medical records from each other provider being sent a notice.” Inasmuch as the authorizations in the instant action authorize each defendant to disclose medical records to the other named medical providers but do not authorize each provider to request the other providers’ records, I conclude that, as in Parks, Plaintiff’s authorizations are “not sufficient to enable defendants to obtain plaintiff’s medical records” and are therefore not substantially compliant with the statute. See Parks, 2018 WL 6242461, at *3.