Problem: The Acme Medical Group is a provider of wellness and occupational medicine. Acme has contracts to do pre-employment physicals, OSHA screening and reviews, and other drug and injury assessments for the local fire department. You have the current position of HIM and HR director at Acme Medical Group and are the custodian of records for all of the testing and OSHA compliance. You have an HIM student intern for the summer and ask him to review the records to see if he can create a database to help monitor the exposure levels of the fire department workers to various chemicals. He discovers that some of the old data are unavailable and that one of the workers at Acme has gone back and created dummy files of old testing data. The student presents his findings to you at his exit conference. Address the following:
What should the HIM director do? What course of action should Acme Medical Group take? What are the potential liabilities for the HIM director? What are the potential liabilities for Acme Medical Group?