Your Medical Records Up For Auction?

Thursday February 01, 2007 10:50pm KTUL Channel 8

Tulsa - Storage bin auctions are usually a great place to get bargains on furniture, televisions and, if you're lucky, some jewelry. But, the storage bin of Dr. Carl Peterson, a retired psychiatrist, contained something much more valuable than the five dollars we paid to get it.

The contents of Dr. Carl Peterson's storage bin were put up for auction. 8 On Your Side purchased them and took an inventory. The records span 13 years, from 1988 to 2001, all of them confidential -- patient histories, blood tests, social security numbers, medications, detailed psychological evaluations. In total, there are 6,971 patient records.

"Shocked, just, I'm just can't believe that someone else has my medical records other than the doctor."

To protect her identity, we will call her 'Maureen,' a 35-year-old former patient of Dr. Peterson.

"I started going to him first in, around 2000, 2001."

Southbridge Office Park was the location of his practice. The directory still holds the name "Christian Psychiatry." But, the only remains of the letters once anchored to the side of the building is pock-marked plaster. A for sale sign is now in the window and the office is vacant.

"My doctor and I are the only ones that should be seeing these records," Maureen says.

And patients aren't the only ones compromised. Records from Hillcrest, Laureate, Brookhaven, St. John's, Tulsa Regional Medical Center and Shadow Mountain are also in the bin, simply through their association with Dr. Peterson.

"Physicians have a duty to protect patient information," says Dr. Frank Phelps, Executive Director of the Oklahoma State Medical Association. "From an ethical standpoint, every physician is taught from the day we start medical school that patient's private information must be protected."

So what happened?

"We followed the law," says Charles Gilmore, who owns Keyport Storage. He says Dr. Peterson was three months overdue on rent and was notified by certified letter that the unit would be sold to the public.

"We have a state law that gives us the procedure that we take in disposing of property when people don't pay their rent," Gilmore says.

"When it's patients, doctor/patient confidentiality and he knew he had records in there and he knew he could lose it, he should have taken care of it, gotten the records out," Maureen says.

Instead, droves of private details suddenly became publicly available, and could have easily ended up in the wrong hands.

"What kind of liability is Dr. Peterson looking at now that some 6,000 files of his are out there?"

"I probably shouldn't comment on that," Phelps says.

"But it's not a position you'd want to be in?"

"I would certainly not like to be in that position."

Had someone else purchased those files, they could have done everything from taking the Social Security number to create new identities to taking the checking account information kept on file for the patients, even blackmail.

Our investigation is far from over. Friday night at 10, we speak with Dr. Peterson to get his side of the story. And, we show you some other things that were in the bin -- things like blank prescription pads. We'll also have advice from the medical community that will shock you just as much as our initial discovery.