When a complaint was lodged with the NSW Privacy Commissioner, Dr Elizabeth Coombs, that Dr Andrew Brooks, Urologist, had, for six months, ignored requests emailed to him by one of his patients for copies of his health records and information – in other words, he was breaking the law – he had this explanation for her. His ordinary email address on his website was set up so that it recognised emails from patients and screened them out so he didn’t get them!!!!
Andrew Brooks, comes over as a professional liar, and this was, of course, another one of his lies.
(We’d love to discuss these allegations with Dr Brooks, but we think he’s another one of those doctors who seems to regard himself as being above being held accountable for anything he’s ever done or said.)
But much worse was to come!
Dr Coombs’ response was, “Oh yes, Dr Brooks! That’s a perfectly good explanation as to why you were breaking the law!!!!!!”
So there you are all you Andrew Brooks out there – now you know what to do if you don’t want to let patients have copies of their health records and information in case they incriminate you.
By the way, before we contacted Dr Coombs, we had sent several emails to Mr Kieran Pehm, the then NSW Health Care Complaints Commissioner, asking if we could make a compliant to the HCCC about Andrew Brooks not responding to requests for health records and information – and it took eight and a half months to get a response, a response which let us know that it was Dr Coombs, and not the HCCC, who was charged with policing the Health Records & Information Privacy Act 2002.