Medical Records Missing After Doctor’s Murder in Las Vegas – Sad Situation but a PHR Could Have Helped the Patients

This is indeed a sad situation and I posted about the murder here on the blog, but now here we are a few months after the fact and patients have lost their records. In April of this year, her husband paid a charity to shred her records, so after April it appears patients are out of luck if they were looking for their files.

80 Year Old Patient shoots and kills his doctor – Las Vegas

The one patient profiled here was a cancer survivor who needed a referral and gave up on his attempts to get his records as he could not get through and no information to provide a new doctor, and he feared he was having a return of cancer. Again, this is a sad scenario, but we are all human too and bad things happen, so a reason to think about getting your own PHR, personal health record started, especially if records are currently on paper and may not exist anywhere else as in this situation. BD

When Doctor Edna Makabenta's patients recovered from the shock of her murder, many, like Dennis Mangus, began the process of choosing a new doctor. The first step for Mangus was to retrieve his medical records.

But after months of trying, Mangus decided he'd better skip ahead or risk getting nowhere. The 66-year-old cancer survivor fears a fourth diagnosis. "I was sure I had cancer again and I wanted to get in to see her to get a referral to go to the doctor," he said.

The appointed date would never come. In January a suicidal gunman and fellow patient killed Makabentas and then himself in her doctor's office. Mangus watched the aftermath on TV. Out of respect, he waited a few weeks to call the office. But with his health deteriorating he needed his records and a referral. He got neither.