A report that top officials at the state health lab shredded hundreds of blood test results for lead-poisoned children earlier this year because they couldn't be bothered with keeping up with requests for the paperwork raises serious questions about the department's record-keeping ability. State health department Secretary Joshua M. Sharfstein, who took over the agency in January, says the two supervisors responsible for the unauthorized dump of information are no longer in their positions and that the test results were all retrieved from electronic data in deleted computer files. That is a relief, but the very fact that such a wholesale destruction of public records could occur is troubling, and state officials need to make a full accounting of the steps they're taking to ensure it doesn't happen again.
The widespread destruction of blood-test records was uncovered earlier this year by state health department Inspector General Thomas V. Russell, whose report noted that supervisors at the lab felt overwhelmed and understaffed in the face of hundreds of requests a month for documents from attorneys representing lead poisoning victims. By law, the lab is required to process all blood tests to screen newborns for lead poisoning, which can cause long-term learning and behavioral problems. In the past, officials kept such records for up to 22 years, or until a patient turned 21, in order to allow victims to file damage claims.
But by last year the department was struggling with a four-month backlog of requests, and the lab's top two supervisors apparently became resentful over the fact that they weren't given enough staff to keep up. So they decided on their own to start destroying records, even though they knew, or should have known, that many of the documents were being sought by the children's attorneys through court subpoenas or public information requests. Yet the I.G.'s report describes how they personally lugged boxes of paper records into bins and hauled them to another floor for shredding.
Workers at the lab who witnessed the destruction warned their superiors what they were doing was possibly illegal, and two of them refused to sign off on letters to attorneys for the children that falsely indicated the lab didn't have the records being sought. Yet the supervisors not only ordered the paper records be shredded, they also instructed the lab's information technology staff to erase the electronic copies of the test results and tried to get the state attorney general's office to confer legal approval on their actions by providing it with what one lawyer there later described as misleading information.
Mr. Russell plans to refer the case to the attorney general's office, which could bring criminal charges against the two supervisors, who have since resigned from the department. It should certainly consider doing so, since the "no harm, no foul" approach the state seems to be taking is inadequate. Dr. Scharfstein's comment that this was merely a "regrettable incident" that the department wants "to be able to put behind us" as quickly as possible suggests he still may be underestimating the problem.
No lasting damage was done this time, but that doesn't in any way diminish the seriousness of what happened or guarantee that any future incidents won't have real consequences. Rather than assuming that the departure of the two responsible employees and recovery of the data ends the matter, Dr. Scharfstein needs to take further steps to assure the public that such incidents won't ever happen again. Mr. Russell's report included recommendations for changes at the lab that would streamline the process of handling records requests; that should provide Dr. Sharfstein with a good starting point.
Moreover, it's not just the health department that needs to be concerned about such issues. In theory, at least, every state agency's documents are vulnerable to harried employees resentful about having to do more with less as a result of budget cuts. Securing vital records is one of government's most important functions, and the safeguards shouldn't depend on the whim of employees who decide they'd rather shred their paperwork than do their jobs.