Patients Sue Vanderbilt For Releasing Transgender Clinic Records To Tennessee AG

The AG’s investigation into the medical center’s transgender surgery billing practices allowed the state office to request access to a wide swath of patient records.

Photo Credit: John Partipilo

By Anita Wadhwani [Tennessee Lookout -CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] –

A lawsuit filed on Monday claims that Vanderbilt University Medical Center failed in its duty to protect transgender patients, caused them serious harm and violated state law and its own privacy policies when it yielded to demands from the Tennessee attorney general to turn over private medical records.

The lawsuit, filed by two patients seeking class action status, accuses VUMC officials of failing to push back on a series of  demands for records from the hospital’s transgender clinic by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti — which first came last November but only emerged publicly last month.

The lawsuit contends that Vanderbilt should have resisted some or all of Skrmetti’s demands.

“VUMC was aware of the parade of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Tennessee over the past few years,” the lawsuit said. “Against that backdrop, its failure to safeguard the privacy of its patients is particularly egregious.”

Patients, the lawsuit said, now “feel for their safety.”

A statement released Tuesday by VUMC said the hospital system was “legally compelled to produce patient records.”

“The Tennessee Attorney General has legal authority to require that VUMC provide medical records that are relevant to a billing investigation of this nature,” the statement said. “We hope to reassure our patients and our employees that the decision to release patient records for any purpose is never taken lightly, even in situations such as this where VUMC was legally compelled to produce the patient records.”

The office of the Tennessee Attorney General, in demand letters served on VUMC in November and March, encompass all levels of transgender care, including un-redacted medical records; staff, volunteer and doctor resumes; communications with outside therapists and emails sent by members of the general public to an LGBTQ questions portal. The demands also included records of individuals who were referred to the transgender clinic but never became patients.

VUMC has not yet directly responded to questions about which records it turned over to the attorney general.

In its Tuesday statement, VUMC said that its “legal counsel are in on-going discussions with the Attorney General’s office about what information is relevant to their investigation and will be provided by VUMC.”

The lawsuit alleges that VUMC breached its contract with patients by failing to safeguard their medical records, then failing to promptly notify them when they had been provided to the attorney general.

It wasn’t until the demand letters were filed in an unrelated lawsuit last month that patients received messages from VUMC that their medical records had been released to the attorney general.

“People should be able to feel comfortable sharing their personal medical information with their doctors without fear that it will be handed over to the government,” said Tricia Herzfeld, the patients’ attorney. “Vanderbilt should have done more to protect their patients.”

Nashville attorney Abby Rubenfeld is also representing the patients.

The lawsuit seeks a declaration that VUMC violated its own privacy policy, a declaration that its current privacy policy fails to adequately inform patients of their rights, and an injunction preventing VUMC from disclosing similar records again without assessing whether the request is made lawfully — and without redacting identifying information.

The lawsuit also claims that VUMC violated state laws, including the state’s patient privacy protection act, its consumer protection act, violated patient’s right to privacy and negligently inflicted emotional distress.

*Per The Tennessee Lookout’s republishing guidelines, this article has been edited for length and journalistic style.