In the Ohio case, Biddle v. Warren General Hospital, a number of patients brought a lawsuit against Warren General Hospital and a law firm, alleging the hospital unlawfully disclosed patients’ confidential medical information so that the law firm could se
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In the Ohio case, Biddle v. Warren General Hospital, a number of patients brought a lawsuit against Warren General Hospital and a law firm, alleging the hospital unlawfully disclosed patients’ confidential medical information so that the law firm could search for potential Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility for the payment of the patients’ unpaid medical bills. The Supreme Court of Ohio, through the opinion of Justice Resnick, held that 1. an independent tort exists for the unauthorized, unprivileged disclosure to a third party of nonpublic medical information that a physician or hospital has learned within a physician-patient relationship, and 2. a third party can be held liable for inducing such tortious disclosure. The facts of the case are as follows. Sometime before 1993, attorney Robert L. Heller, a shareholder in the law firm of Elliott, Heller, Maas, Moro & Magill Co., L.P.A., attended a legal seminar, “where he got the idea that the law firm could assist a hospital in determining whether unpaid medical bills could be submitted to the Social Security Administration for payment.” (Biddle, 395-6). Heller subsequently presented a proposal concerning this idea to Rush Elliott, president of the law firm and, at that time, a trustee of Warren General Hospital Foundation and president of Warren General Hospital Health Systems. Id.
