Mental Health Foundation.
PHILIPSBURG--Delris Cannegieter passed away on October 13, 2020, five days after she suffered a severe stroke. Her daughter Caramelda is convinced that her mother passed away, one day after her 63rd birthday, due to an overdose of psychiatric medication administered by Mental Health Foundation (MHF), where her mother was a patient for years. On Friday, the court ordered MHF to hand over her mother’s medical records.
On July 26, Cannegieter petitioned the court to order MHF to make the records immediately available. In case of non-compliance, MHF was to pay daily penalties of US $5,000 per day, up to a maximum of $500,000, she demanded.
The judge in the Court of First Instance ruled Friday that Cannegieter had made it sufficiently plausible that access to her mother’s medical file was necessary.
“The medical file is pre-eminently the source of information to clarify what the treatment was, [and – Ed.] why, and who was involved. On the basis of this, Cannegieter can consider whether she wishes to take disciplinary action [in the Medical Disciplinary Court] and/or civil action,” the judge said in the verdict, stating that the medical information is “crucial” to be able to prove alleged “careless medical action”.
As the losing party, MHF was ordered to provide a copy of the patient’s complete file within 14 days. In case of non-compliance, the foundation will have to pay daily penalties, as demanded by Cannegieter. Also, MHF was ordered to pay the legal costs of these proceedings, which were estimated at NAf. 3,690.50.
On October 6, 2020, Cannegieter’s mother received two doses of medication. In the morning hours she received her monthly “control medication” and in the evening “SOS drugs”. Two days later she suffered a severe heart attack.
After being reanimated four times, she was transferred to St. Maarten Medical Center, where she died five days later. Her daughter suspects that her mother’s death was caused by the medication her mother was administered by MHF.
According to attorney-at-law Geert Hatzmann, who represented Cannegieter in these proceedings, cardiologist Dr. Emiko Bird-Lake had by letter of October 23, 2020, advised the family of the deceased to have an autopsy performed. However, due to coronavirus COVID-19 restrictions, the pathologist could not travel to St. Maarten from Curaçao to perform an autopsy in a timely fashion.
Cannegieter is a resident of St. Eustatius and her mother is buried there. According to her lawyer, the family wants to obtain a definitive answer to the question whether the mother had indeed received a double dose of long-acting medication within 24 hours, as they suspect she did. If this proves to be the case, Cannegieter, who is a nurse by profession, wants to file a complaint with the Medical Disciplinary Court pertaining to medical errors.
MHF disputed Cannegieter’s “statements and assumptions” and declined to hand over the medical records, as these fall under medical professional secrecy and cannot be handed over to the family of the deceased. Also, Cannegieter’s mother had only authorised her general practitioner to grant her daughter access to her patient file, but not MHF, the foundation claimed.
Jurisprudence on the matter indicates that the duty of confidentiality should not be treated lightly, but under certain circumstances a breach of that obligation may be justified, the court stated.
According to the judge, MHF did not contest the claim that Cannegieter’s mother had received two doses of long-acting medication in one day. In the court’s opinion, it was obvious that Cannegieter struggled with the questions of why her mother was administered a medical “depot” twice on the same day, and in such a short time, whether this was a careless act, and if this may have caused her mother’s death.
The court acknowledged that, as MHF had argued, there were other options, such as an expert report or a witness hearing, by which Cannegieter might provide evidence of negligent conduct. However, in the judge’s opinion, Cannegieter made it sufficiently plausible that access to the medical files was necessary, and that her interest in obtaining these files could not be met in a less onerous manner.
