For nearly one year, a woman in Westerville, Ohio claims she has been receiving faxes of other patient's medical records from Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, according to a Fox28 report.
Elizabeth Spilker has been faxed patient information including "name, weight, age, medical problem, history, list of medications," she told Fox28, or in other words, "Pretty much anything you'd want to know."
Ms. Spilker said she has tried to call the phone number listed on the fax, which is for the Grant Medical Center Heart Disease Management Office, as well as the hospital's main desk, but hasn't been successful. She has also sent the hospital a fax, but the problem persists.
"It's almost always at the end of the day, and it will continue to try and fax you and ringing your phone number until you do something — like unplug it and plug in the fax," Ms. Spilker told Fox28, adding that she has shredded all of the confidential information she's been sent.
The hospital told Becker's Hospital Review the faxes have not been going on for one year as Ms. Spilker claims, but rather happened three times since late December 2017.
When Fox28 reached out to OhioHealth — which operates Grant Medical Center — it provided the following statement:
"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We conducted a thorough review and audit of our fax system logs and found that three faxes were sent to the individual in error due to a transposed fax number in one patient's medical record. The fax number has been corrected and we’re reaching out to the patient involved to make him or her aware. Ensuring the privacy of our patients is a top priority at OhioHealth and we apologize for this error."
Editor's Note: This article was updated June 20, 2018 at 8:04 a.m. to include a clarified timeline of the incident from Grant Medical Center.